Greater Blind Molerat (Spalax microphthalmus) lives in temperate grasslands across Eastern Europe and Asia. Its conservation status is Least Concern.
Fascinating facts about the Greater Blind Molerat
- A blind mole-rat can stretch out to 31 cm (12 in) and tip the scales at 570 g (20 oz), making it as long as a school ruler and as heavy as a paperback novel. Its body is completely tailless and its eyes are sealed behind a skin membrane, with atrophied lens cells trapped in a vesicle and a retinal layer that never sees light. Instead of clawed paws, it shovels earth with its huge front incisors, the same teeth it uses to gnaw roots.
- The greater blind mole-rat is known from the steppes between the Dnieper and Volga rivers, stretching from the Oryol-Kursk railway line in the north down to the North Caucasus in the south. It prefers low-lying black-earth soils and avoids sandy or loamy ground, nesting in steppes, forest steppes, farms, orchards and gardens.
- Despite being totally blind, the greater blind mole-rat spends almost its entire life underground, emerging only as a juvenile to wander into new territory. Adults live solitary lives except during the breeding season, when a single litter of two to five pups is born each March.
- The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the greater blind mole-rat as "least concern," reflecting its status as a common but patchily distributed rodent across Ukraine and southern Russia. Its ability to thrive in both natural steppes and human-altered landscapes like orchards and gardens, even though it can become a pest in cultivated fields.
- A single greater blind mole-rat can hoard up to 14 kg (30 lb) of roots and seedlings in its tunnel network. It feeds on the underground parts of dandelions, umbellifers, chicory and tree seedlings, pulling them up from below.
Sources
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At a glance
RangeEastern Europe and Asia
HabitatTemperate grasslands
DietRoots and tubers
About the Greater Blind Molerat
In the dark, subterranean tunnels of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, the Greater Blind Molerat moves with purpose, its stumpy legs and powerful claws propelling it through the damp, earthen passages with a slow, deliberate intent. As it burrows, its sensitive whiskers and twitching nose guide it through the blackness, painting a mental map of its surroundings with each delicate touch and sniff. This unassuming creature, often overlooked in the grand tapestry of life, is a remarkable exemplar of adaptability, its very existence a testament to the ingenuity of evolution in the most inhospitable of environments.
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