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| Star-nosed Mole - Condylura cristata | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 4 2012, 04:26 PM (2,984 Views) | |
| Elephantus | Jul 4 2012, 04:26 PM Post #1 |
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Star-nosed Mole - Condylura cristata![]() Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Soricomorpha Family: Talpidae Subfamily: Scalopinae Tribe: Condylurini Genus: Condylura Species: Condylura cristata The star-nosed mole is a small mole found in wet low areas of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. It is the only member of the tribe Condylurini and the genus Condylura. Habitat ![]() The range is from southeastern Manitoba to Labrador and Nova Scotia, south and east to southeastern Georgia. The star-nosed mole prefers damp to saturated soils, and often lives in the organic muck adjacent to water. Grassy meadows, marshes, swamps, and deciduous, coniferous, and mixed forests are some of the habitats in which it resided. Description The star-nosed mole is covered in thick blackish brown water-repellent fur and has large scaled feet and a long thick tail, which appears to function as a fat storage reserve for the spring breeding season. Adults are 15 to 20 cm (6 - 8 in) in length, weigh about 55 g. The mole's most distinctive feature is a circle of 22 mobile, pink, fleshy tentacles at the end of the snout, from which they derive their name. These are used to identify food by touch, such as worms, insects and crustaceans. The pink fleshy appendages ringing their snout are used as a touch organ with more than 25,000 minute sensory receptors, known as Eimer's organs, with which it feels its way around. With the help of their Eimer's organs, they may be perfectly poised to detect seismic wave vibrations. Because the star-nosed mole is functionally blind, it had long been suspected that the snout was used to detect electrical activity in prey animals. These moles also possess the ability to smell underwater, accomplished by exhaling air bubbles onto objects or scent trails and then inhaling the bubbles to carry scents back through the nose. ![]() Ecology The star-nosed mole eats small invertebrates, aquatic insects, worms and mollusks. It is a good swimmer and can forage along the bottoms of streams and ponds. Like other moles, this animal digs shallow surface tunnels for foraging; often, these tunnels exit underwater. It is active day and night and remains active in winter, when it has been observed tunneling through the snow and swimming in ice-covered streams. Little is known about the social behavior of the species, but it is suspected that it is colonial. The star-nosed mole mates in late winter or early spring, and the female has one litter of typically 4 or 5 young in late spring or early summer. However, females are known to have a second litter if their first is unsuccessful. ![]() Edited by Taipan, Jul 5 2012, 06:15 PM.
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| Elephantus | Jul 4 2012, 04:30 PM Post #2 |
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Star-nosed mole can sniff underwater, videos reveal 20 December 2006 by Roxanne Khamsi ![]() Some mammals are able to smell under water, a new study reveals. High speed video footage shows that the star-nosed mole and the water shrew sniff through water by quickly re-inhaling the air bubbles that leave their nostrils. Based on these counter-intuitive findings, researchers speculate that other semi-aquatic mammals might also have the capacity to pick up on underwater scents. Biologist Kenneth Catania of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, US, says he became intrigued when he observed star-nosed moles (Candylura cristata) blowing lots of bubbles while they swam. Curious, he measured the rate at which the animals push air out of and back into their nostrils while under water. They manages to blow and sniff roughly five to 10 times per second - about the same rate that rats inhale and exhale while actively sniffing an odour. Take a look at one of the surprising, slow-motion videos, here (mp4 format). Catania placed various objects at the bottom of a water tank, including pieces of earthworm and fish. Using a high-speed video camera, he found that the moles blew lots of bubbles that hit these targets when they neared them. Some of the odour molecules from the objects enter the bubble, and reaches the animal's nose when it re-inhales the air, Catania explains: "This type of diffusion happens very quickly." To be certain that the moles could smell while swimming, he tested their ability to follow a scent trail under water. The biologist smeared the scent of an earthworm across a sheet of Plexiglas and then placed this at the bottom of the water tank. He also covered the Plexiglas with a wire mesh to prevent the mole from using the odd-shaped fleshy appendages around its nose to touch the trail. Watch a slow-motion video of a star-nosed mole sniffing an underwater scent trail through a wire mesh using air bubbles, here (mp4 format). The five star-nosed moles followed the underwater scent trail with 85% accuracy, on average. When the mesh was replaced with one that had openings too small to allow air bubbles to pass through, the moles lost their ability to follow the trail. Catania says that the ability to smell underwater could give the moles, which have poor sight, a helpful advantage: "It would help the animals discriminate food under water." He repeated a similar experiment with two water shrews (Sorex palustris) and found that these animals achieved similar accuracy following underwater scent trails using air bubbles. "I suspect most semi-aquatic mammals might be able to do this," Catania says, referring to other animals such as rats. He stresses, however, that classic marine mammals such as dolphins and whales are not thought to have the ability to smell under water. Previous research has even shown that some whales lack olfactory regions in their brains. Catania also doubts that people can smell under water because we inhale and exhale so slowly compared with the star-nosed mole. He refuses to say whether he has tested this out himself: "I'll take the fifth amendment on that." Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10834-starnosed-mole-can-sniff-underwater-videos-reveal.html Edited by Elephantus, Jul 5 2012, 07:17 AM.
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| Elephantus | Jul 4 2012, 04:32 PM Post #3 |
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Speediest feeding mammal revealed as a mole 02 February 2005 by Kelly Young ![]() Scientists have revealed the identity of the fastest eating mammal - the distinctly peculiar star-nosed mole. This mole finds, identifies and wolfs down its food in an average of just 227 milliseconds - less than quarter of a second. By comparison, it takes people 650 milliseconds to brake after seeing a traffic light turn red. "I don't know of any other mammal that comes close to this," says Kenneth Catania, a biologist at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, US, and lead author of the new study. The key to the mole's speed feasting is its odd snout, which looks like an anemone with 22 pink tentacles. But the tentacles are not used for smell - instead the mole uses them to feel around in the darkness for potential prey. Using a high-speed video camera, Catania and his colleague Fiona Remple found that when a tentacle touched something, the mole made very quick decisions about whether that object was food or not, usually in about 8 milliseconds. The pace of the star-nosed mole's feeding is so fast that it is approaching the maximum speed at which its nervous system can process information. In fact occasionally it does outpace its own brain and skips over objects that were food. Once its brain catches up and realises that the morsel was edible, the mole does a double take and returns to the food. In the natural world, it is rarely cost efficient to pursue small prey because the energy expended is greater than that provided by the food. However, as the time taken to retrieve small prey falls, it becomes more and more profitable in terms of calories consumed. The mole's quickest time from touch to eat was just 140 milliseconds. Catania was not certain what the moles ate in their natural habitat in Canada and north east US, but the marshes in these regions provide a bountiful buffet of small invertebrates. In the lab, Catania fed the moles 1 to 2 millimetre bits of earthworms. The mole's star-shaped nose is not its only adaptation helping it to feed at speed. Its unusual tweezer-shaped teeth also aid in its specialised dining by grabbing small prey more easily. And the mole's brains have adapted to speed eating too. Most species of mole have two areas in the cortex devoted to touch, but the star-nosed mole has three. "This is an example of the extremes to which predators may be pushed to achieve a diet that will supply them with the nutrients that they need," Catania told New Scientist. Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6961-speediest-feeding-mammal-revealed-as-a-mole.html |
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| Taipan | Jan 31 2013, 01:45 PM Post #4 |
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Leading by the Nose: Star-Nosed Mole Reveals How Mammals Perceive Touch, Pain Jan. 30, 2013 — The most sensitive patch of mammalian skin known to us isn't human but on the star-shaped tip of the star-nosed mole's snout. Researchers studying this organ have found that the star has a higher proportion of touch-sensitive nerve endings than pain receptors, according to a study published Jan. 30 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Diana Bautista and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley and Vanderbilt University. Touch and pain are closely intertwined sensations, but very little is known about how these sensations are detected in our cells. In this study, the authors turned to a unique species for answers: the star-nosed mole. In addition to its distinction as the fastest-eating mammal known, the star-nosed mole also possesses one of the most sensitive tactile organs known in the animal kingdom. The star on its nose has the highest density of nerve endings known in any mammalian skin, with over 100,000 fibers in a patch of skin about 1 cm. in diameter. The authors found these nerve endings significantly enriched in neurons sensitive to light touch, with a lower proportion of neurons that detect and respond to pain. The novel touch and pain receptors they identified in the star-nosed mole were also detected in sensory receptors in mice and humans, suggesting that these receptors are likely to be more common across other mammals as well. According to the authors, their results highlight how examining diverse and highly specialized species can reveal fundamental aspects of biology common across different animals. Lead author on the study Bautista says, "By studying the star-nosed mole we identified candidate genes that may mediate touch and pain. These genes represent new potential targets for the development of much needed drugs and therapies to treat chronic pain." The authors are supported by a U.S. National Institutes of Health Innovator Award DOD007123A, the Pew Scholars Program, and the McKnight Scholars Fund (to DMB) and NSF grant 0844743 (to KCC). ![]() Genes expressed in the star-nosed mole's star reveal common mammalian touch and pain sensing molecules. Journal Reference: Kristin A. Gerhold, Maurizio Pellegrino, Makoto Tsunozaki, Takeshi Morita, Duncan B. Leitch, Pamela R. Tsuruda, Rachel B. Brem, Kenneth C. Catania, Diana M. Bautista. The Star-Nosed Mole Reveals Clues to the Molecular Basis of Mammalian Touch. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (1): e55001 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055001 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130184156.htm |
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