Piebald shrew


The piebald shrew is a shrew found in the Turan Lowland east of the Caspian Sea in Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
It grows to to in length, and usually hunts for insects and lizards at night.

Taxonomy

It is the only extant member of the genus Diplomesodon. In 2011, A. Cheke described a new and possibly extinct species based on a 19th-century manuscript: Diplomesodon sonnerati. It was described again in 2018 to meet certain validity requirements of the ICZN code. The American [Society of Mammalogists] considers D. sonnerati to be a subspecies of the piebald shrew, if it exists.