Tenrecs are also called bristly hedgehogs...

1 year ago
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Tenrecs are also called bristly hedgehogs, but they have nothing to do with the hedgehogs themselves. They even belong to different orders: if hedgehogs are insectivorous, then tenrecs are afrosoricids. The order Afrosoricidae, in turn, is included in the superorder Afrotheria. This means that the distant relatives of crumbs-tenrecs are elephants, aardvarks and even manatees.

Scientists call tenrecs "living fossils", and for good reason: the ancestors of tenrecs ended up in Madagascar in the Eocene era, about 30 million years ago. Since then, they have lived in almost unchanged climatic conditions, and have changed little themselves.

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