The Hero Shrew: Scutisorex somereniFrom the Field Museum in Chicago:A fully grown man from the

The Hero Shrew: Scutisorex somereniFrom the Field Museum in Chicago:A fully grown man from the Congo, grabbed a live shrew, put it on the ground, and stood on top of it on one foot for 5 full minutes. When he stepped off of it, the animal walked away. “Anything else would have just been crushed flat,” said Bill Stanley, previously the Director of Collections, Gantz Family Collections Center and Negaunee Collection Manager, Mammals. Though scientists brought a specimen back to the United States, they wouldn’t discover the truly incredible thing about the animal until 1917: Its vertebral column, which has double the number of lumbar vertebrae of typical mammals. For example, typical mammals may have five or six compared to 11 in Scutisorex. The profuse development of interlocking spines—especially on the lumbar vertebrae (from 20 to 28) is a situation unrecorded for any other mammal. The spines are fixed so that the horizontal spines interlock with those of the next adjoining vertebra. “This is the most bizarre spine of any animal in the world,” Stanley said. -- source link

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