He called star-moles "a gold mine for discoveries about brains and behavior in general-and an unending source of surprises".Ĭomparing the mole's snout to vision, his research showed that whenever the mole touched potential food, it made a sudden movement to position the smallest rays, the twin rays number 11, over the object for repeated rapid touches. Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Kenneth Catania, who has studied star-nosed moles for 20 years, recently turned his research to the study of star-moles as a route to understanding general principles about how human brains process and represent sensory information. Predators include the red-tailed hawk, great horned owl, barn owl, screech owl, foxes, weasels, minks, various skunks and mustelids, and large fish such as the northern pike, as well as domestic cats. They become independent after about 30 days and are fully mature after 10 months. Their eyes, ears, and star are all sealed, only opening and becoming useful about 14 days after birth. At birth, each offspring is about 5 cm (2 in) long, hairless, and weighs about 1.5 g. However, females are known to have a second litter if their first is unsuccessful. This mole mates in late winter or early spring, and the female has one litter of typically four or five young in late spring or early summer. Little is known about the social behavior of the species, but it is suspected to be colonial. This explains its ability to thrive in cold aquatic environments. cristata is particularly adept at thermoregulation, maintaining a high body temperature in a wide range of external conditions relative to other Talpid moles. 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. Like other moles, this animal digs shallow surface tunnels for foraging often, these tunnels exit underwater. It is a good swimmer and can forage along the bottoms of streams and ponds. However, the star-nose mole does prefer wet, poorly drained areas and marshes. They have also been found in the Great Smoky Mountains as high as 1,676 meters. Condylura cristata has also been found in dry meadows farther away from water. The star-nosed mole lives in wet lowland areas and eats small invertebrates such as aquatic insects (such as the larvae of caddisflies, midges, dragonflies, damselflies, crane flies, horseflies, predaceous diving beetles, and stoneflies), terrestrial insects, worms (such as earthworms, leeches, and other annelids), mollusks, and aquatic crustaceans, as well as small amphibians and small fish. 3 Snout as related to optimal foraging theory.2.4 Current applications in engineering.2.1.5 Transduction of the mechanical signal.2.1.1 Sensitivity to mechanical stimuli.These moles are also able 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. This speed is at the limit of the speed of neurons. Its brain decides in approximately 8 ms if a prey is edible or not. A report in the journal Nature gives this animal the title of fastest-eating mammal, taking as short as 120 milliseconds (average: 227 ms) to identify and consume individual food items. The nasal star and dentition of this species appear to be primarily adapted to exploit extremely small prey. Because the star-nosed mole is functionally blind, the snout was long suspected to be used to detect electrical activity in prey animals, though little, if any, empirical support has been found for this hypothesis. Other mole species also possess Eimer's organs, though they are not as specialized or numerous as in the star-nosed mole. Eimer's organs were first described in the European mole in 1871 by German zoologist Theodor Eimer.
The nose is about 1 cm in diameter with roughly 25,000 Eimer's organs distributed on 22 appendages. The extremely sensitive star-like structure is covered with minute touch receptors known as Eimer's organs. With the help of its Eimer's organs, it may be perfectly poised to detect seismic wave vibrations. It is the only member of the tribe having a touch organ with more than 25,000 minute sensory receptors, known as Eimer's organs, with which this hamster-sized mole feels its way around. The star-nosed mole ( Condylura cristata) is a small mole found in moist, low areas in the northern parts of North America. A specimen from the collection of the Muséum de Toulouse