Eimar's Star Turn
Saturday-Sunday, April 5-6, 2025
Eimar’s Star Turn
Today’s special animal friend is the star-nosed mole, Condylura cristata. It is about the size of a hamster: about 7 inches long and weighing around 2 oz. This burrowing animal has 22 tentacle-like appendages on its snout. On these appendages are about 25,000 Eimar’s organs, a kind of touch receptor that is also found on other moles.
The “star” is about 1 cm in diameter. It is densely packed with the tiny Eimar’s organs. Their touch receptors are organized in a way that is similar to light receptors in a mammal’s eye. Those on the periphery get a quick sense of an object, while those nearest sense have precision focus. Studies have shown that more than 50% of the animal’s cerebral cortex is devoted to interpreting inputs – touch, not smell! - from the nose.
The upshot of this is that the star-nosed mole can sense and consume prey incredibly quickly, as fast as 120 milliseconds from the first touch. This is the fastest of any known animal. It eats a lot of worms and leeches when burrowing in moist earth. It can also swim, and it can smell underwater by emitting tiny bubbles and then re-inhaling them, laden with scent molecules. In the water, they eat a variety of aquatic macroinvertebrates, including the larvae of caddisflies, stoneflies, and dragonflies. They also eat small crustaceans and fish.
Native to the Northeastern U.S., southeastern Canada, and a bit of the Atlantic coast almost as far south as Florida, the star-nosed mole is active day and night and all year round. In addition to burrowing and swimming, they are found on the surface more often than most other moles. They mate in late winter to early spring. Females give birth to four or five young after about 3 months. The babies are about 2 inches long, hairless, and helpless for the first two weeks. They are independent after 30 days and full-grown in about 10 months.
Predators of star-nosed moles include birds of prey, foxes, mustelids, domestic and feral cats, and skunks. Large fish such as the Northern Pike can eat them in the water. So can bullfrogs. The lifespan of the star-nosed mole is three to four years. They are a species of Least Concern.
Good morning. Happy Saturday to all! D is on a camping trip with the Scouts, so I have to do her dog-walk job for a couple of days, unless I can delegate it to a brother. We'll keep the pay.
There were several "Hands Off" protest/rallies in this area yesterday. I support everyone's right to hold a get-together to represent their point of view, as long as it's peaceful and doesn't disrupt everyone's lives too much.
On the other hand, protests saying, "Never touch a cent of Federal spending, ever!" seem to have lost the plot.
If their point is that the Trump/Musk approach is a totally incompetent scarmable, I think they should express that more specifically, rather than going with, "Hands off our handouts!!!"
** “Everything” was a concern, longtime Charlotte resident Leslie Carter told The Charlotte Observer shortly after the rally. “Everything that has been done affects every individual in the whole country — and parts of the world,” she said. “It’s disastrous.” **
"Never change anything the government is doing," is not a winning - or functional - course of action, in my opinion.