#blesmol

[shortbread-kc]

hes so mad allll the time <3

[scolop98]

saw a cybertruck in the wild today and was struck by how eyeless and wedge-shaped it looks. this is the car version of an amphisbaena's head or a blind mole rat/blesmol/zokor/any of those furry mole-rat-esque rodents. maybe even a golden mole. this is a subterranean creature that would never be exposed to the light of day under natural conditions.

[alphynix]

Blesmols, or African mole-rats, are a group of rodents adapted for mole-like burrowing. Closely related to the more famous naked mole-rat, these little mammals have reduced eyes and ears along with incisors that protrude out even when their mouths are closed, allowing them to excavate tunnels primarily using their teeth.

One of the earliest known fossil blesmols is Bathyergoides neotertiarius here, from the early Miocene of Namibia about 20 million years ago. For almost a century this species was known only from teeth and partial skull remains, but recently a partial skeleton was described giving us a better idea of its overall appearance and lifestyle.

Bathyergoides was a fairly large blesmol, around 25cm long (~10"), and was already specialized for tooth-digging with a skull very similar to modern forms. It had powerful muscular forelimbs that would have been used to push back loose soil while burrowing, but unlike its living relatives it also had a long tail and relatively slender hindlimb bones – with anatomy suggesting its legs were used more for stabilizing its posture than for actively digging.

It may have had a less subterranean lifestyle than modern blesmols, digging out extensive burrows but still foraging for food above ground in a similar manner to modern semi-fossorial rodents like giant pouched rats.

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[shortbread-kc]

also. molerat babies bred from ohdearemoji. i hate them <3

[typhlonectes]

African Mole Rats:  So Much More Than Just the Naked Mole Rat

An intriguing tale of colonial life, surprising phylogenetic relationships and giant protruding incisors…

by Darren Naish

Mention the term ‘mole-rat’ (or molerat, or mole rat) and most people (zoologists included) will think of Heterocephalus glaber, the remarkable Naked mole-rat or Sandpuppy of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. But this is merely one of a whole radiation of African mole-rats, the species of which occur right across sub-Saharan Africa. 

The first thing we have to say is that we’re talking specifically here about bathyergid mole-rats or blesmols, and bathyergid mole-rats or blesmols alone: other morphologically and ecologically similar rodent species are also called mole-rats, but they’re not part of Bathyergidae.

Those species – they include the Eurasian blind mole-rats of the genera Nannospalax and Spalax – are included within a group termed Spalacinae or Spalacidae. They appear to be muroids – part of the enormous rodent group that includes mice, rats, hamsters, voles, gerbils and so on – and hence are not even close to blesmols...

(read more: Scientific American)

photographs by Nigel C. Bennett