Extinction of the Christmas Island Shrew: A Tiny Mammal Lost Forever

Once abundant on Christmas Island, the tiny, five-gram shrew (Crocidura trichura) filled the night forest with its high, thin cry before vanishing into silence.

Introduced black rats and their parasites decimated the island's native mammals, and by 1908 the shrew was thought extinct, its memory confined to museum drawers and field notes.

Brief rediscoveries in 1958 and 1984 brought fleeting hope, but the last known individuals died in captivity, and no others have been found despite decades of searching.

It never weighed more than a spoonful of sugar. Five or six grams of life, soft-furred and sharp-nosed, moving through the roots and leaf litter of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean.