Eulipotyphla (, from '' eu-'' + ''

Lipotyphla Lipotyphla is a formerly used order of mammals, meaning lacking blind gut, including the members of the order Eulipotyphla (i.e. the solenodons, family Solenodontidae; hedgehogs and gymnures, family Erinaceidae; desmans, moles, and shrew-like mol ...

'', meaning truly lacking blind gut; sometimes called true insectivores) is an

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

mammals A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the 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 middle e ...

comprising the

Erinaceidae Erinaceidae is a family in the order Eulipotyphla, consisting of the hedgehogs and moonrats. Until recently, it was assigned to the order Erinaceomorpha, which has been subsumed with the paraphyletic Soricomorpha into Eulipotyphla. Eulipotyphl ...

(

hedgehog A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are 17 species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introduction. The ...

s and

gymnure Gymnures, also called hairy hedgehogs or moonrats, are mammals belonging to the subfamily Galericinae, in the family Erinaceidae and the order Eulipotyphla. Gymnures resemble rats but are not closely related as they are not rodents; they are in ...

s);

Solenodon Solenodons (from , 'channel' or 'pipe' and , 'tooth') are venomous, nocturnal, burrowing, insectivorous mammals belonging to the family Solenodontidae . The two living solenodon species are the Cuban solenodon (''Atopogale cubana'') and t ...

tidae (solenodons);

Talpidae The family (biology), family Talpidae () includes the true Mole (animal), moles (as well as the shrew moles and desmans) who are small insectivore, insectivorous mammals of the order (biology), order Eulipotyphla. Talpids are all fossorial, diggi ...

( moles, shrew-like moles and

desman Desmans are aquatic insectivores of the tribe Desmanini (also considered a subfamily, Desmaninae) in the mole (animal), mole family, Talpidae. This tribe consists of two living species found in Europe: the Russian desman (''Desmana moschata'') ...

s); and Soricidae (true shrews) families.

Taxonomic history

Historically, these animals were grouped with others such as

treeshrew The treeshrews (also called tree shrews or banxrings) are small mammals native to the tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia. They make up the entire order Scandentia (from Latin ''scandere'', "to climb"), which split into two families: the ...

elephant shrew Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivore, insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order (biology), order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "ele ...

s, and

colugo Colugos (), flying lemurs, or cobegos (), are arboreal gliding euarchontogliran mammals that are native to Southeast Asia. Their closest evolutionary relatives are primates. There are just two living species of colugos: the Sunda flying lemur ...

s, under the broader category

Insectivora The Order (biology), order Insectivora (from Latin ''insectum'' "insect" and ''vorare'' "to eat") is a now-abandoned biological grouping within the class of mammals. Some species have now been moved out, leaving the remaining ones in the order ...

, comprising all small insect-eating placental mammals.

Wilhelm Peters Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (22 April 1815 – 20 April 1883) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer. He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Natural History Museum, ...

identified two sub-groups of Insectivora, distinguished by the presence or absence of a

cecum The cecum ( caecum, ; plural ceca or caeca, ) is a pouch within the peritoneum that is considered to be the beginning of the large intestine. It is typically located on the right side of the body (the same side of the body as the appendix (a ...

in the large intestine. In his 1866 ''Generelle morphologie der organismen'',

Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, Philosophy, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biology, marine biologist and artist ...

named these groups Menotyphla and Lipotyphla, respectively from ''μένω'' ("remain")/''λείπω'' ("lack" or "leave behind") + ''τυφλὸν'' literally "blind", as in ''τυφλὸν ἔντερον'' ("blind intestine", from which the Latin ''intestinum caecum'' derives as a

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

). Since the late 1990s, molecular studies have produced evidence that the Lipotyphla are not a

monophyletic In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent co ...

group. This led to

tenrec A tenrec () is a mammal belonging to any species within the afrotherian family Tenrecidae, which is endemic to Madagascar. Tenrecs are a very diverse group, as a result of adaptive radiation, and exhibit convergent evolution, some resemble hed ...

s, otter shrews, and

golden mole Golden moles are small insectivorous burrowing mammals endemic to Sub-Saharan Africa. They comprise the family Chrysochloridae (the only family in the suborder Chrysochloridea) and as such they are taxonomically distinct from the true moles, f ...

s being placed a new order (

Afrosoricida The clade Afrosoricida (a Latin-Greek compound name which means "looking like African shrews") contains the golden moles of Southern Africa, the otter shrews of equatorial Africa and the tenrecs of Madagascar. These three groups of small mamma ...

, in the superorder

Afrotheria Afrotheria ( from Latin ''Afro-'' "of Africa" + ''theria'' "wild beast") is a superorder of placental mammals, the living members of which belong to groups that are either currently living in Africa or of African origin: golden moles, elephan ...

), with the remaining members of Lipotyphla being reclassified as Eulipotyphla. A 2023 study suggested that the order began to diversify prior to the K-Pg extinction, based on

molecular clock The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleot ...

estimates.

Classification

* Order Eulipotyphla (= 'Lipotyphla' - Afrosoricida = 'Erinaceomorpha' + 'Soricomorpha') ** Family

*** Subfamily

Erinaceinae A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are 17 species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introduction. There ...

: hedgehogs *** Subfamily

Galericinae Gymnures, also called hairy hedgehogs or moonrats, are mammals belonging to the subfamily Galericinae, in the family Erinaceidae and the order Eulipotyphla. Gymnures resemble rats but are not closely related as they are not rodents; they are in ...

: gymnures or moonrats ** Family Soricidae *** Subfamily Crocidurinae: white-toothed shrews *** Subfamily

Soricinae The red-toothed shrews of the subfamily Soricinae are one of three living subfamilies of shrews, along with Crocidurinae (white-toothed shrews) and Myosoricinae (African white-toothed shrews). In addition, the family contains the extinct subfamil ...

: red-toothed shrews *** Subfamily

Myosoricinae According to the current taxonomy, the Myosoricinae are a subfamily of shrews. As such, they form one of three main types of shrews, the other two being the red-toothed shrews and the white-toothed shrews. They are the only one of the three t ...

: African white-toothed shrews ** Family

*** Subfamily

Talpinae The subfamily Talpinae, sometimes called "Old World moles" or "Old World moles and relatives", is one of three subfamilies of the mole family Talpidae, the others being the Scalopinae, or New World moles, and the Uropsilinae, or shrew-like mo ...

: Old World moles and desmans *** Subfamily

Scalopinae The Scalopinae, or New World moles, are one of three subfamilies of the family Talpidae, which consists of moles and mole-like animals; the other two subfamilies being the Old World talpids (the Talpinae) and the Chinese shrew-like moles ( Urop ...

: New World moles *** Subfamily

Uropsilinae The shrew moles or shrew-like moles (''Uropsilus'') are shrew-like members of the mole family of mammals endemic to the forested, high-alpine region bordering China, Myanmar, and Vietnam. They possess a long snout, a long slender tail, external ...

: shrew-like moles ** Family

Solenodontidae Solenodons (from , 'channel' or 'pipe' and , 'tooth') are venomous, nocturnal, burrowing, insectivorous mammals belonging to the family Solenodontidae . The two living solenodon species are the Cuban solenodon (''Atopogale cubana'') and the ...

: solenodons **† Family

Nesophontidae ''Nesophontes'', sometimes called West Indies shrews, is the sole genus of the extinct, monotypic mammal family Nesophontidae in the order Eulipotyphla. These animals were small insectivores, about 5 to 15 cm long, with a long slender snout ...

: extinct West Indian shrews **† Family

Amphilemuridae The Amphilemuridae are a family of extinct mammals belonging to the order Eulipotyphla, from the Eocene of Europe and North America. Description Amphilemurids were generally small in size and may have resembled moonrats in life. Some species had ...

**† Family

Nyctitheriidae Nyctitheriidae is a family of extinct eulipotyphlan insectivores known from the Paleocene and Eocene Epoch, epochs of North America and Asia and persisting into the Oligocene of Europe. Several genera, including ''Nyctitherium'', ''Paradoxonycter ...

**† Family Plesiosoricidae Family-level cladogram of modern eulipotyphlan relationships, following Roca et al. and Brace et al.: The upper and lower basal subclades within the tree are the suborders Solenodonota and Erinaceota, respectively. These two branches are estimated to have split ~72–74 million years ( Ma) ago. The Nesophontidae and Solenodontidae are thought to have separated roughly 57 Ma ago. Split times for talpids vs. soricids plus erinaceids, and for soricids vs. erinaceids, have been estimated at 69 Ma and 64 Ma ago, respectively.

Notes

References

{{Authority control Mammal orders Extant Paleocene first appearances