deep underground, blind moles covered in silky yellow fur are “swimming” through the sand. These elusive creatures, called northern marsupial moles (Notoryctes caurinus), spend so much of their lives below the surface that they remain largely a mystery to wildlife biologists.
They have no eyes, stubby tails and short snouts, as well as triangular claws on their front feet. Their bodies are covered in soft fur, and they primarily eat worms and grubs.
The Kakarratul is a fascinating creature that “swims” through the sand of Australia’s western deserts. Unlike most burrowing mammals that leave hollow tunnels behind, Kakarratul carve a path and fill it in as they go, squeezing their body forward through the sand. Despite being blind, they expertly navigate the underground and use their calloused nose and forehead as a ram to burrow.
The creatures need very little oxygen to survive and can get by with just “breathing the air that flows between sand grains,” wrote Joe Benshemesh, a biologist with the National Malleefowl Recovery Group, for Australian Geographic in 2010.
“While their unusual form of locomotion is slow and laborious, they also seem tuned to a frugal life and save energy and resources by allowing their body temperature to reflect that of the surrounding sand, as if they were reptiles,” he added.
With the Dune movie out, this seems timely.
Evolution continues to amaze with forms bizarre and wonderful.
But when starved, it can become a real nightmare, researchers report in a bioRxiv preprint. The creature begins to resemble something out of Dune, growing a giant mouth and indiscriminately eating its kin—the only animal that regularly does so.
