My transport arrived promptly at 05:00 am -a beat-up old Datsun Sunny which had clearly seen better days. I grabbed my gear & collapsed into the rear passenger seat. We sped off into the African darkness with dawn still well over an hour away. My two companions chatted quietly in Swahili. The driver, Felix was a large jovial man who wore a perpetual grin, whilst the other man, David Ngala, was a quiet-spoken slight-built unassuming man whom I learned had recently retired from the Kenyan Forestry department. David was to be my bird guide for a full day visit to the Arabuko-Sokoke forest in coastal Kenya.

Initially David made polite inquiry as to the well-being of my family & asked how they were enjoying their Kenyan holiday, but as the conversation dried-up fatigue got the better of me & I slipped off into a light sleep. When I awoke the eastern sky was already beginning to glow & we were fast approaching our destination. David briefly described the sites we would be visiting including a list of the target birds of special interest. I stared out of the window at the passing trees as we made our way into Arabuko forest. As we continued along a forest track David named some of the trees & described some of the animals still found in the forest (which included Elephant & Buffalo). Much to my surprise he then asked me if I had ever heard of an animal called the Sengi?

Now I have had a strong interest in wildlife since childhood & had rather arrogantly assumed that there were very few beasts that I hadn’t heard of …but the Sengi? …..aye, right!!
I clearly hadn’t managed to hide my skepticism however as David smiled & went on to describe the Sengi. He spoke of a mammal the size of a small hare & clad in dark-brown fur but with a bright golden –almost fluorescent yellow rump. He told me that the ears & tail were rat-like but the spindly legs were fairly long (this animal has a high-stepping gait and trots, like a small antelope, on its toes rather than on footpads). He also told me that they never climbed trees or dug burrows but preferred to sprint off from danger at high speed and though very shy, foraged by day. Strangest of all he described a triangular tapering head which ended in a flexible trunk. This was clearly something I had to see!


David advised that our first location, tall Afzelia-dominated evergreen forest should with luck provide a glimpse of the Golden-rumped Sengi as well as our first target bird the endangered Spotted Ground-Thrush. As light levels improved the few Ground-thrushes disappeared though other species such as Red-tailed Ant-Thrush & Red-capped Robin-Chat became more obvious. Whilst watching a Red-capped Robin-Chat work the leaf-litter on the edge of a track I suddenly became aware of a brown blob with a luminous yellow centre……… and there it was the Golden-rumped Sengi. Though I had not seen anything quite like it before I realised that it was some form of Elephant-Shrew but bigger than any Elephant-Shrew image I had ever seen previously. Here in front of me was a relict of a bygone time and gazing at this strange beast through the scope felt almost surreal, like I was looking through the window of a time machine back to the elder days of this earth. In front of me was a creature which has remained essentially unchanged from a time when the mammals made their play for supremacy after the extinction of dinosaurs.

Following our initial sighting we were lucky to observe a few of these animals throughout the early morning. Unfortunately they were too shy to approach within deep forest and would only tolerate our presence on the more open tracks at some distance so the enclosed images are heavily cropped & of poor quality. Nevertheless it seems that apart from recent camera-trap images (set up to monitor the highly endangered Aders’s Duiker), a few images taken by field biologists & some footage in the BBC Natural History archives, these mammals have been rarely photographed in the wild.

Golden-rumped Sengi is one of four species of giant Elephant-Shrew of the genus Rhynchocyon (-a new species has just been discovered in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains). The Golden-rumped Sengi, R. chrysopygus is the rarest of the genus being classified as endangered on the IUCN red list (2002). Essentially this bizarre animal is confined to the Arabuko-Sokoke forest in coastal Kenya & is found no-where else. Unfortunately the Arabuko-Sokoke forest is under considerable pressure from land clearance for subsistence farming & deforestation for firewood & building timber. As well as supporting Sengis this forest also holds one of the few last mainland populations of Aders’s Duiker as well as a number of charismatic near-endemic birds such as Sokoke Scop’s Owl, Clarke’s Weaver, etc. The only chance that this forest has for survival is if local people begin to see it for its true value. Eco-tourism through birdwatching & other similar sustainable activities may prove the only hope for this unique area. See:
http://www.birdlife.org/action/ground/arabuko/index.html & http://www.kipepeo.org/index.php

On returning home I’ve felt compelled to do a little research into Sengi biology. For me the most amazing facts relate to their relationship with other mammal groups. I had assumed that they were related to the insectivores (moles, hedgehogs and shrews) but in fact their taxonomy is hotly debated & with the use of new genetic techniques (e.g genome comparison) to study evolutionary relationships it seems that Sengis (now the common name being preferred to Elephant-shrews as it has no insectivore connotations) represent an ancient monophyletic African grouping apparently sharing affinities with certain other African orders. These peculiarly African-derived mammal orders seem to have arisen following the creation of Africa after the break-up of Gondwanaland and include the Elephants, Sirenes (Manatees & Dugongs), Hyraxes, Aardvark, Golden-Moles & Tenrecs. Many biologists now group these mammal orders together in a super-order called Afrotheria.

To get a feel for these amazing animals check out this link: http://www.arkive.org/golden-rumped-elephant-shrew/rhynchocyon-chrysopygus/video-00.html

David Ngala is now the conservation officer for the Friends of the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. You can read about the trials and tribulations of the difficult work he does here: http://davidngala.wildlifedirect.org/author/davidngala/ or you can visit this amazing forest and experience it for yourself.