shrew
8
5.1
- noun
- /ʃruː/
:
musaraña
- The shrew is known for its remarkable ability to burrow through the earth in search of food.
- shrews and mice
Examples
-
In the meadow, I spotted a small shrew searching for insects among the grass.
-
Now that it was beginning to thaw, there were shrew skulls to be dug up and nets to check for bats.
Fiction book (1993) -
the shrew feeds only by the dark of the moon
-
The tiny shrew lives only a year or two, but the huge elephant lives, on average, between forty and fifty years.
Academic text (2006) -
An elephant's heart, for instance, makes about twenty beats a minute, but a shrew's heart makes more than 600.
Academic text (2006) -
For Lyme disease and HPS, small mammals such as mice and shrews are the most important natural reservoirs of the pathogen.
Academic text (2009) -
The shrew darted across the path, quickly disappearing into the underbrush.
Synonyms
A small animal like a mouse with a long nose that eats insects
Compounds
- UK
A small mouse-like mammal with a pointed nose and thick fur found in Europe and northern Asia
- Specialized
A small mole with a long pointed snout that lives underground and eats insects
A small mammal with dense fur that lives in streams and hunts aquatic insects
A small burrowing animal from eastern Asia that looks like a shrew and a mole
A small animal like a mouse that lives near fresh water in Europe and eats insects
- US
A very small brown mammal like a mouse that lives in grassy areas in the eastern United States
- US
A small, common shrew with a dark head and back that lives in wet places in North America
A small mammal that lives in and near water in southern Europe and northwest Africa
A small brown mammal from Malaysia with a bare tail and long stiff hairs at the tip
How Big
Surface Forms
Etymology
Shrew for the small, mouse-like mammal comes from old English names for tiny, sharp-nosed creatures that hunt insects, so the name fits this active little animal with a pointed snout.