Meet the Lowland Streaked Tenrec native to Madagascar!

This fella certainly looks unique, doesn't he? It was high time I shared something cuter.

So the Lowland Streaked Tenrec lives in the tropical lowland rain forests of the Northern part of Madagascar and is a small predator species feeding mainly on warms and other tiny prey and sometimes fruit. It rarely exceeds 6 inches in size (or 16 centimeters) and weights about 7 oz or 200 grams.

What makes it unique besides it's long snout and limbs are it quills. The animal obviously uses them for defense by pointing them in the direction of its attacker and driving the detachable barbed ones into their paws and faces to fend them off. But the quills have another amazing usage that makes the Lowland Streaked Tenrec absolutely unique...

Communication

The Lowland Streaked Tenrec uses some of the non-barbed quills on its back to actually produce sound much like a rattling snake but only much fainter. The animal basically voluntarily makes the quills hit against each other to produce a sound. This is not done to intimidate or scare anybody. Instead, this is how tenrecs of this particular species communicate with each other. This means of producing sound is called stridulation and the Lowland Streaked Tenrec is the only known mammal to employ this method which is much more common in insects and snakes.

Image Credits: [1] | [2]

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Thank you for reading! :)