South Dakota’s short-tailed shrew records concentrate in the state’s eastern prairie country, around Sand Lake and Waubay national wildlife refuges and nearby state game production areas. That’s the glaciated, pothole-dotted landscape of grassland and wetland edges where this shrew can tunnel through thick leaf litter and matted vegetation without ever breaking the surface.
It’s one of the few North American mammals with a mildly toxic bite. The shrew uses saliva from a gland near its lower teeth to subdue insects, earthworms, and other invertebrates too large to overpower outright, and it feeds almost constantly to fuel a metabolism that runs hot even by shrew standards.
South Dakota’s records turn up in nearly every month, climbing through summer and holding into early fall before tapering off. That pattern likely tracks when observers are out in the field rather than the shrew’s own activity, since it keeps foraging under snow and leaf litter right through winter instead of denning up.
