This strange little creature—which, to me, looks like an overgrown bumble bee with an unusually large snout—is a lowland streaked tenrec. They are native to Madagascar, covered in spines, and, according to Dr. Natalie Cooper, who has studied them, "like a hedgehog crossed with a shrew, crossed with fury. . . They are very angry little things."
While they use their spines mostly for defense, what's super cool about lowland streaked tenrecs is that they also use their spines to make ultrasonic noises! According to the BBC, these are the only animals in the world that communicate in this way! The Natural History Museum, London, explains:
The group of closely gathered spikes on its lower back rub together to make sound. This is known as stridulation and is something also seen in insects, such as cicadas, which use their wings to make a buzzing sound.
Humans can't hear the noises tenrecs make with their spines. It's thought that the tenrecs might be using these ultrasonic sounds to communicate with their young as they traverse the dense understory of their forest habitat.
Because our human ears can't hear ultrasonic noises, when capturing the tenrec stridulation noises on the videos linked below, the BBC used a bat detector so they could pick up the noises and allow viewers to hear them, as well. BBC explains:
Using the bat detector, the filmmakers found that the seemingly "quiet" mammals were constantly communicating.
Scientists have theorised that tenrecs could also be using high pitched calls to echolocate in the dark forest, finding their way with sound rather than sight in a similar way to bats.
The film crew were also hoping to record evidence of a particularly bizarre audio behaviour, unique to streaked tenrecs.
In the 1960s, streaked tenrecs were found to communicate using specialised quills on their backs, rubbing them together to make high pitch ultrasound calls.
Animals such as crickets, beetles and vipers are known to communicate by rubbing together body parts in behaviour known as "stridulation."
However, stridulation had never been filmed before in mammals. The crew captured footage of the tenrecs rubbing together these specialist quills on their back as they foraged.
Enjoying watching (and hearing) these curious creatures in action, below!
