Shrew

Shrew
First Appearance	10/64 (Alpha)
Progenitor	Shrew Lizard
Canon Information

Shrews are a major group of fauna on Sagan 4 Alpha which are best known for their resemblance to mammals, particularly in derived forms. The original shrew lizard was created by Giant Blue Anteater, with the first highly mammalian forms developing mostly through contributions from Clayren and TheBigDeepCheatsy.

Controversy and Extinction Attempts

As a clade judged to be a type of earth clone, mammal-like shrews gained similar levels of dislike from their inception as other earth clones introduced in 2007 such as nodents and plandaphants. This was exacerbated by some shrews, such as the kangashrew and the wolf shrew, being seen as explicit copies of specific Earth mammals. Giant Blue Anteater, regretting what his species had been turned into, suggested that shrews be wiped out with a plague, which in turn led to the creation of the shrew plague and the death soriparasite, which wiped out the majority of shrew species at the time. However, one mammal-like species survived and produced descendants, which in turn survived the gamma ray burst that followed a few generations later.

The shrew plague would not be the last time there would be an intentional effort to bring about the extinction of shrews, as in 2008, around the time of the ice comet, many localized extinction events were engineered specifically to wipe out every single mammal-like shrew on Glicker. However, the xolagoba also rafter to Wright around that time and was left alone; the reason for this, if there is any, has been lost to time. (The velishroot also survived the armageddon, however due to a clerical error it was considered to be extinct at the time and would likely have been wiped out if not for said error).

The snowball event, too, saw an attempt to get rid of mammal-like shrews, but by replacing them with alienified descendants rather than killing them outright. In particular, Clarke, who spearheaded an anti-terran movement in 2009 and 2010, wanted to replace the whiskerpick with a descendant which turned its spikes into a shifting exoskeleton and its whiskers into sideways jaws, which would have outcompeted the icicleback and in some manner cause the extinction of the guloglut. It is not known if this replacement was ever actually submitted, but it was certainly never approved and both the whiskerpick and the icicleback survived the snowball event unscathed.

Following the snowball event, mammal-like shrews were isolated on Jaydoh island with the presumed intent that it sinking would eventually cause their extinction. However, as the Sagan 4 community matured following the end of the anti-terran drama, sentiment changed and the marine tamow was created as part of a swap between Hydromancerx and TheBigDeepCheatsy to save the clade.