Ugly communication

Remember our old friend the streaked tenrec? Tenrecs are a family of insectivores that occur only on Madagascar, where they've evolved to fill all sorts of ecological niches and developed into forms that look like all those other insectivores that are absent from the island. So you get tenrecs that look like hedgehogs, shrews, and, as in the case of this species, a scrub brush having a bad hair day.

The streaked tenrec has a very special feature of its own, though. It can make a sound by rubbing its quills together. In this picture you can see the special quills it uses for this purpose:



Making a sound by rubbing body parts together, called "stridulation," is familiar in creatures such as crickets. But apparently it had never been filmed in a mammal before, and now, in this clip from the BBC, you can not only hear it, but see it close up, and I have to say, it is actually kind of creepy. Go check it out.

-Wombat (No Relation)