However, have you heard of elephant shrews? Unlike massive elephants, elephant shrews, also known as ‘sengi’, are tiny -- mouse-sized, to be precise.

If you've never heard of them, you're forgiven because the species was thought to be extinct.

Well, until researchers stumbled upon them again recently.

Traps were set up

According to a report by Ladbible, the species have been rediscovered in Djibouti, Africa while researchers were exploring the area.

The tiny creatures - which got their nickname from their noses, which resemble trunks - were thought to be a lost species for the last 50 years, as the last sighting was recorded by scientists in 1968.

In a quest to find the elephant shrews, researchers reportedly set up more than 1,000 traps consisting of peanut butter, oatmeal and yeast in 12 locations.

In the first trap they set up in Djibouti, they caught one and later, they caught 12 more.

"When we opened the first trap and saw the little tuft of hair on the tip of its tail, we just looked at one another and couldn't believe it.

"A number of small mammal surveys since the 1970s did not find the Somali sengi in Djibouti - it was serendipitous that it happened so quickly for us,” Steven Heritage, a research scientist at the Duke University Lemur Center, told the BBC.

The research has been published in a study that can be found on the journal PeerJ.