The Corbet's forest shrew (''Sylvisorex corbeti'') is a species of

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

in the family Soricidae. It is known from a single specimen found in the Mambilla Plateau in Nigeria; its range likely extends into neighboring Cameroon. The specimen was found in a forest swamp, at an elevation of .

Taxonomy

It was described in 2009 by Rainer Hutterer and Christian Montermann from specimens gathered by G. Nikolaus in 1988, which was previously identified as '' Sylvisorex ollula''. It was named for Gordon Corbet, mammal curator of the London Natural History Museum.

Description

''S. corbeti'' is the largest species in the genus ''

Sylvisorex The forest shrews are the members of the genus ''Sylvisorex''. They are mammals in the family Soricidae and are found only in Africa. The genus name comes from the Latin world "silva" which means "forest" and "sorex", which means "shrew-mouse". ...

''. The head and body of the holotype specimen, an adult female, is long, with a tail. It weighs . It has dark brown fur, with round ears and unusually long hind feet. Hutterer and Montermann described it as having "a unique combination of characters of a terrestrial forest shrew (large body, tail of medium length, ear conch of moderate size) with those of

scansorial Arboreal locomotion is the locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some animals may scale trees only occasionally (scansorial), but others are exclusively arboreal. The habi ...

shrews (elongated limbs)."

References

Sylvisorex Mammals described in 2009 {{whitetoothed-shrew-stub