Tennessee’s 348 records of the northern short-tailed shrew come entirely through GBIF, without a single iNaturalist photo credited to the state.
Venom, and a life spent out of sight
This shrew is one of the few venomous mammals in North America. Its toxic saliva can paralyze earthworms and insects, letting it stash prey alive in an underground pantry instead of eating everything it catches at once. A metabolism that fast forces near-constant hunting, almost entirely underground and under leaf litter, which is why Tennessee’s record set is built on trapping surveys rather than casual sightings.
A June spike that tracks fieldwork, not the shrew
Reports jump sharply in June, to 241 records, the single highest month by a wide margin, with October and November also running high. That pattern lines up with when small-mammal trapping surveys are typically run across the state’s forests, not with any real summer change in the shrew’s numbers.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the northern short-tailed shrew S5, Secure, and lists it as native to Tennessee. USGS NAS doesn’t list it as nonindigenous in the state.
