Piebald shrew

The piebald shrew (Diplomesodon pulchellus) is a shrew found in the Turan Lowland east of the Caspian Sea in Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Piebald shrew[1]
Piebald shrew in Moscow Zoo
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[2]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Eulipotyphla
Family:	Soricidae
Genus:	Diplomesodon
Species:	D. pulchellus
Binomial name
Diplomesodon pulchellus (Lichtenstein, 1823)
Piebald shrew range
Synonyms
Sorex pulchellus Diplomesodon pulchellum

It grows to 2 inches (5.1 cm) to 2.75 inches (7.0 cm) 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 (Sonnerat's shrew). It was described again in 2018 to meet certain validity requirements of the ICZN code.^[3] The American Society of Mammalogists considers D. sonnerati to be a subspecies of the piebald shrew, if it exists.^[4]