Behaviour
The four-toed elephant shrew is mostly active during the day and early evening, whereas during the night or midday, it tends to be less active. When the four-toed elephant shrew runs, its tail points upwards; it also makes a noise through its hind feet. Ants react to this sound, which helps the four-toed elephant shrew to locate its prey.
When four-toed elephant shrews fight, they usually fight in pairs of the same gender. They fight in a "boxing" motion, supporting themselves on their rear legs and boxing with their front limbs to tackle one another. Four-toed elephant shrews have good senses of sight, smell and hearing, but their vocal capacity is not well developed. In captivity, they make different kinds of sounds, such as screaming, purring or clucking for help.
Read more about this topic: Four-toed Elephant Shrew
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
“The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“I look on it as no trifling effort of female strength to withstand the artful and ardent solicitations of a man that is thoroughly master of our hearts. Should we in the conflict come off victorious, it hardly pays us for the pain we suffer from the experiment ... and I still persist in it that such a behaviour in any man I love would rob me of that most pleasing thought, namely, the obligation I have to him for not making such a trial.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)