the.com/common shrew
A tiny, furious heart that must eat every few hours or die trying.
means A small, red-toothed Eurasian shrew (Sorex araneus) with a frantic metabolism, found in hedgerows and grasslands across most of Europe.
from 'Shrew' traces back to Old English 'screawa', whose roots are murky but likely echo the animal's sharp, shrieking cry. Medieval folk belief held that the shrew's touch or bite was venomous and could lame livestock — utterly false, but the fear stuck so hard that 'shrewd' and 'shrewish' (a scolding, ill-tempered person) both spun off from the same root, the word curdling from 'small biting mammal' into 'sharp-tongued person' over centuries of superstition.
- heart rate
- beats up to 800 times per minute
- appetite
- eats roughly its own body weight daily
- lifespan
- rarely survives past 14 months in the wild
- skull shrinkage
- brain and skull shrink for winter survival