Sensational Senses: Amazing Ways Animals Perceive the World
CHAPTER 1 Star of the Swamp STAR-NOSED MOLE SCIENTIFIC NAME Condylura cristata SECRET HIDEOUT wetlands of southeastern Canada through the eastern United States as far south as Georgia SIZE up to 8 inches 20 cm long from star to tail WEIGHT up to 2.7 ounces 77 g SUPER SENSE ultrasensitive touch A dark creature scampers through a tunnel under a swamp Pit-pat-pit-pat Its body is cloaked in sleek black fur Its face appears to be under attack by a pack of tiny wriggling pink worms Except those aren’t worms that’s its superpowered nose Say hello to the star nosed mole As the creature darts through the dark tunnel it rapidly pats its supersensory snout along the moist marshy soil The nose encounters a soft pink slug Slurrp The slug disappears into the mole’s mouth The mole creeps forward bopping its nose along the ground Splat The nose touches a grub Chomp In a blink the tasty morsel is gone The mole will continue all day finding meals with its sensitive nose By the end of the day it will have eaten its body weight in food 6
SPEED EATING CHAMPION The star nosed mole lives in marshy wetlands This swamp dweller digs deep tunnels underground with its sharp front claws and sometimes it comes to the surface for a swim The mole is practically blind but sight isn’t much use in its dark subterranean world Instead the critter surveys the world through its star shaped nose a supersensitive organ for touch The mole’s nose is about the size of the tip of your pinkie It is made of twenty two fleshy pink arms or rays As the mole blindly scurries through a tunnel it rapidly presses its nose along the moist soil With each pat nerves in the star send signals to the mole’s brain Duncan Leitch was a student at Vanderbilt University when he wanted to learn more about how that extraordinary nose communicates with the mole’s brain He counted the star’s nerve fibers the individual threads that send signals along the nerves He added up over 168,000 nerve fibers By comparison the palm of your Star-nosed moles are skilled hunters that find food with their fleshy snouts
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
The mole is a speed eating machine moving Leitch believes star nosed moles have a lot to like lightning to identify and eat everything from insects to mollusks worms and small fish In a little more than a tenth of a second the creature can touch prey with its snout decide the prey is edible pick up the prey with its tweezerlike front teeth chew and swallow That’s how long it takes you to blink It happens incredibly fast said Leitch It’s one of the fastest food handling times of any animal that’s ever been recorded teach us about what it’s like to experience the world through touch They provide a window to understanding that sense in a way that we can’t tell in studying ourselves He continues to be amazed by sensory superstars like the star nosed mole It’s surprising to me getting to look at the diversity of animals and how they can survive in different environments he said There’s kind of a unique beauty in all of these diverse creatures SLIMY SNOT BUBBLES The star nosed mole has another trick up its supersensory snout It can smell underwater something no other mammal is known to do When swimming the mole blows a small bubble out of its nose and inhales the bubble again This allows the mole to smell whatever the bubble has touched like a small fish Yum As with everything the mole does its underwater smelling is superspeedy A mole can blow a bubble and inhale it again in the same time it takes you to take a sniff of air Underwater the star nosed mole is a speedy sniffer 9
