A team of student researchers has captured the first-ever photographs and videos of California’s most elusive mammal, the Mount Lyell shrew (Sorex lyelli).
The tiny creature, measuring 9–10 cm and weighing just a few grams, was first identified in 1902 but had never been photographed alive.
The shrew spends much of its life underground in the high-altitude region of the Eastern Sierra – an area in California comprising the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. It has small, beady eyes, a pointy nose, and feeds on insects. But aside from that, we know very little about them.
Wildlife photographer Vishal Subramanyan and his colleagues, Prakrit Jain and Harper Forbes – three students from the University of Arizona and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) – were keen to change that, and on 1 November 2024, they set out on a three-day research trip to see if they could find the secretive shrew.
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Search for shrews
With permits from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the students made for the small community of Lee Vining, between Mono Lake and the eastern gateway to Yosemite National Park.
Here, they set up camp. In the stream and wetland areas around them, they dug a series of small holes in the ground, which they then inserted with plastic cups. They baited these 'pitfall traps' with cat food and mealworms, then waited.
Within the first two hours, the researchers had already captured two shrews. These small mole-like mammals have incredibly fast metabolisms and will die if they don’t eat every two hours, Subramanyan explains, so they needed to monitor the traps constantly.
“You trap some shrews, you photograph them, you release them, and by that time there are more shrews. So it was pretty nonstop,” says Subramanyan.
In the three nights that followed, the team caught and photographed 15 shrews of four different species: the montane shrew, Merriam’s shrew, vagrant shrew and Mount Lyell shrew.
Their findings were verified by experts at UC Berkeley and the California Academy of Sciences. The state of California lists the Mount Lyell shrew as mammal species of special concern, and the researchers say it faces threats from climate change, with 89% of its habitat projected to disappear by the 2080s.
The team hope their work will raise awareness and encourage conservation efforts for this rare and overlooked mammal. “In an era of rapid biodiversity loss, it is important to record this information while it still exists while simultaneously fighting the extinction crisis,” says Subramanyan.
Main image: Sierra Nevada at night, California/Getty Images
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