the.com/shrew
a thumb-sized assassin that must eat or starve within hours, no exceptions
means A tiny, sharp-nosed insect-eating mammal with a frantic metabolism — or, by old insult, a sharp-tongued, scolding person (traditionally a woman).
from From Old English 'scrēawa,' the name for the little animal. The creature had a fearsome folk reputation: people once believed its bite was venomous and that it could lame cattle just by running over them — a beast far more dangerous than its size. By the medieval period the word had leapt from the animal to people, first as a general term for a spiteful, vicious person and later narrowing to a nagging, ill-tempered woman, the sense Shakespeare made famous in 'The Taming of the Shrew.' The wider family of related words is uncertain, though it may be a cousin of Germanic terms for 'dwarf' or 'devil.'
- venom
- some species deliver paralyzing venom through their bite
- heart rate
- can hit over 1000 beats per minute
- appetite
- eats up to three times its body weight daily
- echolocation
- navigates using ultrasonic clicks like a tiny bat
- winter trick
- some shrink their own skulls and brains to survive
common shrew — smallest mammal in europe at 2-3.5 grams, found across temperate asia and europe
pygmy shrew — one of world's smallest mammals at 1.3-2.6 grams, native to eurasia
water shrew — semiaquatic shrew with venomous saliva, hunts aquatic invertebrates in european streams