New Jersey’s occurrence data include 494 records of the northern short-tailed shrew, a common tally built almost entirely from incidental encounters rather than targeted shrew surveys. Its life happens mostly out of sight, under leaf litter and inside shallow tunnels, so what gets reported is a small slice of what’s actually there.
From dune grass to hardwood duff
The short-tailed shrew turns up in nearly any patch of ground with enough leaf litter, loose soil, or thatch to tunnel through, which is why records span both the maritime dune and marsh edges of Sandy Hook on the Atlantic coast and the wooded wetland edges of Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge inland in the Piedmont. Neither setting looks much like the other, but both give the shrew the loose cover it needs to move unseen.
One of the few venomous mammals in North America
This shrew delivers venomous saliva through grooved lower teeth, a trait shared by almost no other mammal on the continent, and uses it to subdue earthworms, insects, and even small mice. A shrew this size burns through energy fast enough that it has to eat close to its own body weight in food most days, hunting in short, frantic bursts around the clock rather than settling into one clear daily rhythm.
Status in New Jersey
NatureServe ranks the northern short-tailed shrew S5, secure, and it’s native across New Jersey.
