Momentarily pausing after eating some mealworms, an elusive shrew’s long snout pointed skywards, unaware of the historic portrait that had just been captured.
Not a single Mount Lyell shrew had ever been photographed alive before, making them the only known mammal species in California to have eluded human cameras, according to the California Academy of Sciences.
That all changed in October when recently graduated wildlife photographer Vishal Subramanyan along with student scientists Prakrit Jain and Harper Forbes ventured out into the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains and captured six live Mount Lyell shrews (Sorex lyelli). There, they photographed and observed them before setting them free.
The initial idea originated with Jain, a student at University of California, Berkeley, who said he was “shocked” to find that no one had ever taken a photo of a live Mount Lyell shrew.
In collaboration with University of California Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Jain, Subramanyan and Forbes devised a plan to search the streams and wetland habitats that crisscross the sparse landscape near the small community of Lee Vining, about 300 miles (482 kilometers) east of San Francisco.
Shrews have such a high metabolic rate that they die if they stop eating for a few hours, meaning that they don’t survive long in traps.
The team set more than 100 pitfall traps, designed for shrews to fall into as they walked across the ground, and constantly monitored the traps for three consecutive days, only sleeping for two hours at a time to monitor the animals’ wellbeing.
“We caught a Mount Lyell shrew within like the first two hours… and I think the fact that we ended up catching six of them, and we caught one so easily shows that it’s not crazy difficult,” Subramanyan said.
“It just shows that it’s generally an underappreciated species in an underappreciated ecosystem that people haven’t spent the time, and been able to actually bring dedicated focus to the shrews.”
They also recorded four different species of shrews in the area, some of whom were so similar to the Mount Lyell shrew that they later ran genetic tests to confirm that they had indeed spotted one.
“Handling the shrews was a little bit difficult,” Forbes told CNN, adding that they cut off a small piece of the shrews’ tails for genetic testing.
“They bite and they’re venomous. So we had to improvise quite a bit. We had to weigh them in plastic bags, and they’re only a few grams, but they chew through the plastic bags. They’re kind of a pain generally, but they’re worth it.”
By capturing the shrews alive, the team said they were able to observe their behavior, noticing the mammals’ habit of stashing food away for later or taking micronaps.
Photographing live animals, particularly ones who are smaller and more obscure, also allows the public to connect with them, helping conservation efforts.
Mount Lyell shrews are extremely threatened by the climate crisis and could lose up to 90% of their cold, high altitude habitat as the Earth warms, researchers said, citing a study conducted by UC Davis.
“Without that kind of public awareness and outreach through photographs, the species could have just quietly disappeared under the radar, and nobody would have had any idea about it,” said Subramanyan.
