Pygmy White-toothed Shrew

The Etruscan shrew, as this species is known elsewhere, is the smallest living mammal by mass, weighing about 1.8 g with a body of about 4 cm excluding the tail. It has a long mobile snout, protruding ears and pale brown fur. Its metabolism is so fast that it eats one and a half to two times its body weight daily, mostly invertebrates such as insects, larvae and earthworms, and sometimes the young of amphibians, lizards and rodents (Wikipedia, general species account).

Across its wide range it favours warm, damp, shrubby ground, often where open terrain meets deciduous forest. It mates mainly from March to October, gestation is 27 to 28 days and litters are two to six. None of this was checked for Sri Lanka. Nationally Endangered (Sri Lanka National Red List 2012).