Not a bizarre punchline as you might expect but the sengi: the world's fastest small mammal. This seemingly contrary combination of features has enthralled scientists since they first discovered these animals at the turn of the 19th Century.
At first glance they might look like just another shrew - a small, furry mammal that loves to eat insects - and this is how they were initially described. But decades of scientific attention has shown the tiny tearaways could hold substantial secrets about how mammals evolved.
Their long noses earned the animals comparisons to elephants and the family of 18 species native to Africa are also known as the elephant shrews.
Strangely, scientists in the 1990s discovered that despite their diminutive size, they are genetically more closely related to their elephant namesakes than to shrews.
Their motley branch on the tree of life was named Afrotheria and includes aardvarks, sea cows such as dugongs and manatees, elephants, hyraxes and Madagascar's tenrec. The habits of sengis have continued to surprise biologists: they eat a termite and ant diet which is more common to larger mammals, do not nest like other small mammals, hibernate overnight and have remarkably long bones in their feet.
According to experts the latter two of these features are a result of their adaptation to running, which makes them unique among small mammals.
