Endangered
Cuban solenodon
Atopogale cubana
The Cuban solenodon is a small, furry, shrew-like mammal endemic to mountainous forests on Cuba.
Appearance
With small eyes, and dark brown to black hair, the Cuban solenodon is sometimes compared to a shrew, although it most closely resembles members of the family Tenrecidae of Madagascar. It is 16–22 in (41–56 cm) long from nose to tail-tip and resembles a large brown rat with an extremely elongated snout and a long, naked, scaly tail.
Range and habitat
It is endemic to mountainous forests in the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountain range of eastern Cuba, in the provinces of Holguín, Guantánamo, and Santiago de Cuba, though subfossil evidence showed it once inhabited throughout the island. It is nocturnal and travels at night along the forest floor, looking for insects and small animals on that to feed. The Cuban solenodon, also called the almiquí, is a small, furry, shrew-like mammal endemic to mountainous forests on Cuba.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
This species has a varied diet. An elusive animal, it lives in burrows and is only active at night when it uses its unusual toxic saliva to feed on insects.
In crisis
The Cuban solenodon is endangered and was once considered extinct due to its rarity. It and the Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus) are the only surviving solenodon species. The others are extinct.
Cuban solenodon is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Cuban solenodon, Wikidata item Q34486275. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
