Shrews I

You alone are the LORD; You have made heaven, The heaven of heavens, with all their host, The earth and everything on it, The seas and all that is in them, And You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You. – Nehemiah 9:6

Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You. – Jeremiah 32:17

O LORD, how many and varied are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your riches and Your creatures. – Psalm 104:24 AMP

Shrews are an interesting group of animals. These little critters have a very high metabolic rate (burning loads of calories, both at rest and during physical activity). Basically, this means they have to eat a lot of food to maintain their weight and health. Shrews have been known to eat more than their own body weight during a single day!

Not sure I’d like to try that myself, unless perhaps if it were ice-cream on a really hot day, or maybe warm chocolate chip cookies with a tanker full of ice-cold milk. Actually, one day at college I decided to eat only donuts for the entire day. That didn’t turn out too well either.

On second thought, I think I’ll just leave this sort of thing to the shrews… The primary food source for most shrews is insects, but they do eat fungus and seeds as well.

There are over 300 species of shrews in the world, with about 40 percent of them indigenous to Africa.

Shrews have acute hearing and sense of smell, and their whiskers are attuned to detect subtle changes in touch. Although it varies with different species, many shrews have relatively poor eyesight compared to their sense of hearing and smell. Their eyes detect movement rather than detailed images. Shrews often root around in leaf litter on the forest floor, and dig out most any invertebrates they can find.

Like the marmots I wrote about not long ago, shrews have a rather extensive vocal range of barks, whistles, clicks and chirps (see Marmot I). And similar to the marmot, they use these calls for defense, courtship, to signal presence of predators, etc.

Shrews vary a bit in size, but the body of a common shrew is about 2-3 inches long, with a slightly shorter tail. They weigh about ½ an ounce (1/32 of a pound). By contrast, the African elephant weighs about 12,000 pounds. That is 384,000 times bigger than a shrew, and both live on the same continent!

As one of the above Scriptures states – O LORD, how many and varied are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your riches and Your creatures. – Psalm 104:24 AMP

How did God think of all this?

If you’d like to have your own personal relationship with the One Who loves you more than any words I could ever write or express, and Who thought of ALL of creation, please see Got God?

Hope you have a great day.