• Question: are all moles blind

    Asked by BNiallB to Ines, Carrie, Ellen, Rupert on 15 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by ELLISRUDGE69.
    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      I think it depends on how strict you want to be. If I’m not wrong, true moles are blind, but not all molerats (not true moles, which means that they are not from the same family) are completely blind. Generally they all have poor vision because they spend most of their time underground where there is no light, so they don’t need to use their eyes so much. But sometimes when they want to disperse (or need to disperse like when they are evicted from their group) they go above ground and travel longer distances. I think they do it mostly at night when there are fewer predators, but even at night, poor eyes can still pick up small differences in light and darkness, like the light from the moon, so eyes are still useful.

    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 16 Mar 2017:

      I think there are lots of mole species so I don’t know about all of them. I think most of them would have very poor eyesight though because it’s not much use to them underground!

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 16 Mar 2017:

      i think I answered this question previously but now for some reason I can’t find it. No they aren’t – they have relatively poor eye sight but that is primarily due to a lack of use (where they live underground). They can see enough to see movement and also to tell light from dark. Moles have relatively small eyes. They have a special small pink patch on the end of their nose which they use to help them detect other moles and prey underground – sensing and smelling them!

Comments

  • Photo: Ellen

    Ellen commented on :

    I am under the impression that actually moles are not blind.. but they don’t have the best eyesight (I guess that’s not a primary sense when you spend the majority of your life underground!). Their eyes are quite small but they can use them to see movement and to identify light from dark. Apparently they also have a really really cool adaptation to help them find animals underground…. according to Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust (http://www.nottinghamshirewildlife.org/animal-facts/mole) they have some bare skin on the end of their nose which is covered in teeny tiny pimples which help them to find prey and other moles by detecting movement and smells! Pretty cool huh!

    My Dad saw a mole once (think maybe it was near a road), he stopped to rescue it and was kindly thanked with a nice bite from the mole! Obviously he didn’t communicate that he was trying to help 😀