Tales of sengi tails

In 2000, my wife Lynn and I were in Namibia researching the social organization of Elephantulus intufi (Rathbun and Rathbun 2006). During a meal at our study site which we shared with the landowner, his two sons and two archaeologists studying local rock art, the archaeologists showed us a newly published book (LewisWilliams 2000). When Justin Holloway, the youngest son of the landowner, saw the cover photograph of a rock engraving he exclaimed “Hey look, an elephant-shrew”. When I saw the cover, it was obvious that Justin was right. I contacted Craig Foster, the photographer, who put me in touch with Janette Deacon, who was studying the site where the photograph was taken. Janette believed the engraving represented a composite of different animals, including the head of a shrew and the legs of an elephant. After several e-mail exchanges, we agreed that the engraving was a reasonably accurate depiction of an elephant-shrew or sengi. The site is well within the known distribution of a couple of species of Elephantulus, which I assumed were the models for the images. To our knowledge, this is the only known rock art of sengis.