Tupai: A field study of Bornean treeshrews by Louise Emmons, University of
California Press, £12.50/$19.95, ISBN 0520223845
“ACTIVELY alert creatures that border on the neurotic” is how Louise Emmons
sums up her subjects, treeshrews, a group of little-studied mammals with their
biodiversity headquarters in Borneo.
After three centuries of shuttling them between rodents, insectivores, and,
more recently, primates, scientists have concluded that a peculiar combination
of primitive and specialised anatomy means that treeshrews are, well, treeshrews.
As such they are one of the 26 orders of mammals, which puts them on a par
with bats, whales and primates as a…
