the.com/tree shrew

means A small, bushy-tailed mammal from the forests of Southeast Asia that looks like a squirrel but is classified in its own order, Scandentia, and was once controversially grouped with primates due to its relatively large brain and sharp senses.

from The name is a straightforward English compound — 'tree' plus 'shrew' — slapped on by early naturalists because the animal scurried through branches like a squirrel but had the pointy-snouted look of a shrew. The scientific label, Scandentia, comes from Latin 'scandere,' meaning 'to climb,' which is at least honest about what the thing spends its time doing. For much of the 20th century it was shuffled in and out of the primate order based on skull and brain studies, since its anatomy sits tantalizingly close to the base of the primate family tree — hence its reputation as a living stand-in for what early primate ancestors might have looked like.