<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > the little mouse that cheated the corpse</h1>
As night fell, a snail shell appeared to lie the carcass of a cold, stiff little mouse. As the night swallowed up the light, the corpse actually moved slowly, began to move slightly stiff, then became more and more flexible, and finally jumped around alive.
On closer inspection, it's not a little mouse, but a shrew: the smallest mammal on the planet. There are more than 200 kinds of shrew shrews, the largest is the water shrew shrew, the smallest is the small skunk, the adult body length is only 3 cm, the average weight is about 2 grams, it is really light as a feather.
The shrew is not lying in the snail shell pretending to be dead, but sleeping, completely "dead sleep". The shrew's work and rest rules are the opposite of those of humans, day and night, and in order to save energy during the day, they will reduce the temperature of the body to a very low and reduce metabolism, just like corpses. When you wake up at night, nature is like a corpse.
If the shrew does not lower its body temperature and control the rate of metabolism when it sleeps, it will definitely sleep until the next life before waking up. The speed of metabolism is too fast, the smallest skunk skunk beats 1200 times a minute, breathing 850 times, human heartbeat of 70 times, 15 breaths is like a tractor compared to the shrew, and it is like a supercar.
Supercars definitely consume fuel, and so do shrews, consuming about 2-3 times their body weight every day to provide energy for the body to function properly. If the shrew sleeps and maintains such a high metabolic level, it will soon become weak and eventually run out of energy and die. Therefore, the shrew must lower its body temperature when it sleeps, like a cold and stiff corpse.
Why is the metabolic level of the shrew so high? The larger the surface area of an individual, the more heat is dissipated, and the larger the volume, the more heat is produced, that is to say, the greater the value of (body surface area/volume), the faster the heat dissipation, and many higher metabolic levels are used to provide heat. There is a rule that the smaller the size of an individual, the greater the value of (body surface area/volume), and the shrew is the smallest mammal, and naturally the mammal with the highest metabolic level.
Of course, the long-term maintenance of such a frightening metabolic level of the shrew has side effects, just like a sports car running at high speed at full load for a long time, sooner or later it will explode, the side effect of the shrew is premature aging, short life, very few shrews can live for more than 16 months.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > shrew preys on mice</h1>
After pulling so much, the shrew that woke up at the beginning has begun to hunt, and its food is usually insects, earthworms, snails and other small animals. But tonight, this little shrew is ready to do a big vote, catch a mouse to eat, adult rats are more than ten times larger than shrews, and small mice are also several times larger than shrews, how to start with shrews?
It turned out that the little shrew had already seen the prey: a juvenile rat that was eating, and the juvenile rat was not deeply involved in the world, and it was easier to start. The shrew slowly approached the mouse, pretending to be searching for food, and the mouse looked at the shrew and looked a little similar to himself, not disgusted, and relaxed his guard. The shrew suddenly attacked the mouse, biting its forelimbs, and the rat felt like it had been pricked by a needle, jumped up at once, and at the same time threw the shrew far away, and the shrew fell a blue nose and swollen face.
The rat stared at the shrew viciously, and the shrew also gave up resistance and lay on the ground, as if to say: Uncle Rat, spare your life! The rat was angry, but it was not easy to catch the shrew, and it was better to continue to eat some human scraps, but it was better not to let the shrew get closer.
Slowly, the rat's heartbeat began to slow down, and breathing became difficult and slow, like a shrew that had fallen asleep. Then the mouse's movements became stiff and uncomfortable, and finally it lay on the ground and convulsed vigorously a few times before it stopped moving.
The shrew looks docile, but in fact it is full of poisonous teeth, and when it sneaks up on the rat, it quietly injects venom into the rat. The shrew's venom is not as deadly as that of a venomous snake, and the rats are not dead, but are only temporarily paralyzed. But at this time, the shrew appeared again, and it bit the rat alive and ate it to death.
Sometimes the shrew is busy all night, looking for food, sometimes they only need to dry a big guy to rest, but the higher the return, the higher the risk, many shrews in the process of predation, but become the prey of the prey.