The genus name Solenodon means grooved tooth, and the groove is the point. A channel along the second lower incisor conducts toxic saliva from a gland in the lower jaw into prey as the animal bites. Only a handful of living mammals are venomous, among them the solenodons, some shrews, the male platypus and slow lorises, each having arrived at it separately.
The venom appears to serve subduing invertebrate and small vertebrate prey rather than defence. Bites on people are painful but not medically serious. Solenodons hunt by probing leaf litter and soil with a highly mobile snout supported by a ball-and-socket joint at its base, an arrangement not found in other mammals.
The lineage is the deeper story. Genome sequencing places the split between solenodons and other living placental mammals at about seventy-four million years ago, so they are remnants of an ancient Caribbean fauna. The IUCN moved the species from Endangered to Least Concern in 2020 on better information about its range and numbers, which is a change in knowledge rather than a recorded recovery; population estimates remain crude.