Creature Feature #7

A pleasant mole for your weekend!

Feb 23, 2025

Hello. Do you know the golden mole? It is a very creature-y creature, and I love them. The are friend shaped! Just look at those little paws and nose:

A small, round creature sits on sand. It's fur is short and quite shiny, it has a tiny pale pink nose, and small pale pink front paws which it holds together in front of its round body. There are no visible eyes, just smooth fur down to the nose.

Also: surprise! No eyes! So there are 21 types of golden mole (that one up there is a Namib Golden Mole), and every species has compact “lozenge-shaped bodies, short and powerful forelimbs containing pick-like claws, and no external eyes, ears or tail.” They’re just little guys! Little creach-orbs! With a nose!

Their fur can come in a range of colors, but it’s always quite shiny and usually has an almost iridescent sheen. Which makes them very pretty, to me. And they burrow around underground/through sand, so their eyes are vestigial and covered by skin, and while they do have little ear openings, they’re totally covered by the silky, thick fur. Look at this one showing you its tiny teeth:

A small oblong mole with shiny fur faces the camera with its pink nose slightly lifted and mouth open. Tiny teeth are just visible above the lower lip. There's some sand stuck around its nose, and it's sitting on a sandy surface.

They eat bugs, like termites, and live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Please please enjoy this gif of one hunting a bug (which they mostly do via sound vibrations):

A close up shot of fine sand shifting and sliding off the coat of a mole as it rises up from beneath to the surface.

Basically, they hunt using their very Extra middle ears, which detect minute sounds, then they zip up under their prey and munch it like a sandworm from Dune or something. I didn’t include a pic of that, but no termite is safe just because they tiptoe about. Plus that gif is from a short clip you can watch on YouTube, if you’d like to see 1 minute of a mole silk-ing its way through the sand to hunt a snack.

Holy moly! (yes, yes: boo)

Anyway, they are also one of the only known iridescent mammals! Wooo! Now you know about them, and you too can enjoy picturing a golden mole when you’re in a boring meeting or waiting in line a the DMV or something. Good times!

Here’s one last photo that I can’t find a source for, just some random pages in Russian from about 2 years ago? Since I don’t know what the pages are, and it doesn’t even look like the photo originated on them, I’m not going to link that. But please appreciate the iridescent green shine on this mole:

A mole lies stretched across a human hand, small enough that it only takes up a small portion. The fur is a greyish color on top fading to a blondish color on the belly. Along it's sleek looking side there is a faint but clear green iridescent patch of fur catching the light. Shiny!

Catch you next week with one of my favorite reptiles! It’s toothy! Here’s a meme to get you through until then:

Sources:

NPR - Holy Mole-y (I’m not the only one who made that bad pun)
Afrotheria Specialist Group - Golden Moles
Just stuff I knew, I guess? I didn’t need to look as much up about these little guys.

Fauna Facts for Friends

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