I FIRST HEARD THE STORY OF A LEGENDARY animal called the hero shrew (Scutisorex somereni) some time ago. Apparently, somewhere in the tropical African forests of northeastern Congo there lived a small mammal that could withstand being stood on by a 70kg human for five minutes at a time and remain unaffected by the ordeal.
Really? It seemed so fanciful and implausible to my enquiring and scientific. It wasn’t until many years later, sitting around a campfire with an African mammalogist, that I began to realise there was some truth in these claims.
