Its features are typical of a white-toothed shrew − short legs, slender snout, dense fur − except for a highly unusual spinal column.

This unique adaptation allows the animal to bear a huge amount of weight on its back − 72 kg (159 lb) according to an expedition team.

The evolutionary benefit of its unusual spine is unknown; it is hypothesized that it allows the animal to push itself under logs or between a palm tree's leaves and trunk to find food.

[4] During an expedition to the Congo region in the 1910s, the natives demonstrated the remarkable strength of the hero shrew to naturalists Herbert Lang and James Chapin.

After some mystical preparation, an adult male estimated to weigh 72 kg (159 lb) stepped on a shrew and balanced himself on one foot.

[9] Relative to body size, the hero shrew's spine is roughly four times more robust than any other vertebrate (excluding its sister species).

[8] The hero shrew is found in tropical rainforest in the Congo Basin and nearby mountains, over an altitudinal range of 700 to 2,230 m (2,300 to 7,320 ft).

Its range includes Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda, but apparently does not extend west of the Oubangi River.

Its distribution overlaps multiple protected areas and thus the hero shrew is unlikely to experience significant population decline in the near future.

[5][10] In 1974, Jonathan Kingdon suggested that the robust spine and associated posture keeps the animal's body clear of wet ground in swampy habitats.

[8] An alternate idea was that the intricate spine somehow evolved as the consequence of some unrelated adaptive factor, as in the spandrels of St. Marco hypothesis.

[9] In 1998, Dennis Cullinane and his colleagues undertook an extensive survey of hero shrew's anatomy and concluded there was no obvious functional significance for the adaptation.

Although this behavior has not been directly observed, when local people are collecting beetle larvae in a similar fashion, they often encounter the shrews.