Sensational Senses: Amazing Ways Animals Perceive the World

Sensational Senses: Amazing Ways Animals Perceive the World — page 5
The mole’s star-shaped nose is the size of the tip of your pinkie finger hand has about 17,000 So the mole has the sensitivity of almost ten human hands crammed into an area the size of your pinkie tip Leitch said those nerve signals create star shaped patterns in different parts of the mole’s brain So each time the mole taps its super snout on the ground it is creating a star shaped picture of its surroundings in its brain The mole’s nose is not only supersensitive it’s superspeedy With the rays of its fleshy star the mole can touch up to twelve different objects in one second High speed cameras have helped scientists slow this down so they can see and understand how the mole uses its star As the mole presses its nose along the ground the outer rays feel for food If This extreme close-up top shows the eleven rays on half of the star Signals from those rays create a star-shaped pattern in the mole’s brain bottom those rays encounter an object that might be a meal the mole touches the item with its inner rays These inner rays are smaller but even more sensitive This is like how your fingertips are more sensitive than the palms of your hands If the mole decides the object is edible snack time 8