Nearly every record of this shrew traces back to Saint Lawrence Island itself, an isolated spot in the Bering Sea that sits closer to Siberia than to mainland Alaska. It’s the only place on Earth the species is known to live, so the records here map a single island’s tundra and coastal ground rather than a broader range.
Life on that island runs on invertebrates, topped up with scavenged carrion when the chance comes up. Like every Sorex shrew, it feeds almost constantly to keep up with a fast metabolism, and a female can raise close to two litters a year, each averaging six or seven pups.
The handful of confirmed reports cluster in July through September, the short stretch when the island is reachable and researchers are actually in the field. That timing says more about fieldwork logistics than about the shrew’s real seasonal habits, and the sparse record overall reflects how hard the island is to visit, not how few shrews live there.
Full species profile
