a small tenrec, from the group of primitive insectivores which survives only in Madagascar and Cuba. Small enough to wander around on one's hand, the prickly tsur, with its exaggerated pointed snout, is a devoted mother. They have been known to die — romantically, "of a broken heart" — while grieving for and mounting guard over a dead child. (The actual mechanism of death is more likely starvation, since like shrews and other small warm-blooded creatures, it must eat its body weight daily to survive.)