It was finally ready for its close-up.
The rare Mount Lyell shrew was recently photographed for the first time by a group of college students.
The pointy-nosed, beady-eyed, greyish-brown creature that is native to the Sierra Nevada region was the only known mammal in the state of California that had never been captured on camera, according to SFGATE.
That all changed in November when the students — two from UC Berkeley and one from the University of Arizona — trapped the tiny animals, which are only 9 to 10 centimeters long and weigh between 2 and 3 grams.
One of the students, Vishal Subramanyan, 22, told the outlet that their sighting could possibly be the very first time in history that a human has even seen the creature, which was named after Mount Lyell in Yosemite National Park.
“So it’s very possibly one of the most poorly known mammal species in California,” he said.
Subramanyan and his friends Prakrit Jain, 20, and Harper Forbes, 22, had purposely set out to find the species after learning it had never been photographed, and obtained a permit from California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The trio set up traps filled with cat food and mealworms in the desert of the Eastern Sierra and caught five Lyells as well as 10 other shrews from three other species.
Shrews have extremely fast metabolisms and will die if they don’t eat every two hours, so the group slept for no longer than two hours at a time to make sure their traps contained food.
“It was kind of go, go, go,” Subramanyan told SFGate.
“You trap some shrews, you photograph them, you release them, and by that time there are more shrews. So it was pretty nonstop.”
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To prove the creatures the students photographed were, in fact, Lyells, small pieces of their tails were genetically tested at the California Academy of Sciences.
The elusive animal is native to the Eastern Sierra Nevada region and spends most of its time underground. It was first discovered over a century ago by zoologist Clinton Hart Merriam, a New York City native who was known as the “father of mammalogy.”
The students hope their project sheds more light on the tiny creatures, which the state considers a mammal species of special concern and their conservation.
“Photography is really important for cataloging biodiversity on a rapidly changing planet,” Subramanyan told the outlet.
“When it comes to California’s shrews, there’s so few good photos out there. So taking these photos that haven’t really been taken before helps the public understand and foster a connection with these animals.”
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