Few people know about the golden-rumped sengi, also known as the Elephant Shrew. It is related to the elephant in that it has the same body structure in much diminished proportions. Sengi is the bantu word for shrew and is recommended by conservationists.

This pint-sized animal is endemic to Kenya. But even in the country, it is confined to the Arabuko-Sokoke and Gede forests in Kilifi County at the Kenyan coast.

Both forests are revealing more interesting species as researchers continue to conduct studies in the face of recent reports of oil and gas prospecting in one of the few remaining natural coastal tropical forests. A protected area, this coastal forest covers 40,000 ha (400 square kilometres).

The Zoological Society of London has highlighted the golden-rumped sengi as a global conservation priority because it is not only threatened but it is also evolutionarily unique.

The society has developed a scoring system for the world’s mammals based on their evolutionary distinctiveness (ED) weighted by Global Endangerment (EDGE). The golden-rumped sengi is ranked 46th out of over 5,000 mammal species based on these two criteria. If it were to become extinct it would be a major loss to global biodiversity.

Bernard Agwanda, research scientist and mammal curator at the National Museums of Kenya, and a Red List assessor for rodents of Africa for the World Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is concerned that whereas the world knows Kenya for its big game — lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, leopard — the little creatures have been left out. Red List evaluates the extinction risk of species and subspecies in the world and conveys the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, in a bid to reduce species extinction in the world.

Agwanda names the other four “little big guys” only found in Kenya — with samples collected from the field as early as the 1900s and some as recent as this century — as the African maned rat, also called the African crested rat, the giant mastiff bat, the Kenya Coast galago and Mandela’s sengi. “These unique small mammals are not as visible as the big five but need protection.”

“This is the African maned rat,” Agwanda points out at an exhibit in his lab at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi. “It is the only vertebrate known to apply plant poison on its body to protect itself against predators.” The rat chews the bark of the highly toxic poison arrow tree (acokanthera schimperi) —which hunters in the past used to make poison to kill elephants with — and then slathers it on its black and white body. Any animal that attacks ingests the deadly poison.

“The need to deter predators has led to one of the most extraordinary defenses known in the animal kingdom,” said Jonathan Kingdon, a zoologist, scientist, author and artist teaching at Oxford University and lead author of the paper that describes the phenomenon. What’s still puzzling is how the rodent is able to survive a dose of toxin that can kill elephants.

Mandela’s sengi is the new “discovery” of this century but already threatened. “It suffers the HIPPO syndrome,” says the researcher, HIPPO being the acronym for habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, population increase (human) and overexploitation.

“Most species are threatened by it. We lost 90 per cent of the mangrove forest between 1990 and 2000; 90 per cent of dugong between 1990 and 2003. On the other hand, Kenya’s human population is expected reach 51 million by 2025, up from eight million in 1960.”

But these are not the only small animals that Agwanda has mentioned. In 2002, a new species, the Taita Mountain dwarf Galago, a primate, which fits in the palm of a hand, was described as endemic to Kenya. Another example is the vampire bat. “It’s found in Kakamega forest and it’s a false vampire,” says Agwanda.

“Their large numbers in the forest sustain the ecosystem – otherwise there would be tonnes of insects making life in the forest unbearable.

“If you want to see the giant mastiff bat, there are tens of thousands that roost in the caves of Suswa. But their numbers are rapidly declining too. In 2003 there were an estimated 20,000. A count in 2008 showed a sharp decline – only 8,000. Between 2012 and 2013, almost all females (up to 98 per cent of the 358 females) were breeding in the caves in the Chyulu Hills. Being high and fast fliers, many run the risk of flying into wind turbines and being fatally wounded.”