Animal of the Day: Star-Nosed Mole

Beasts are all around us. Many of them are familiar and many of them are so odd and mysterious that they challenge the laws of what we find nonfiction. Each weekday on GUY, we take a look at one of them.

A warning: Some will be adorable. Some will make your skin crawl. Some of them will make you never want to leave the house.

Yesterday’s Animal: The Sun Bear!
Today’s Animal: The Star-Nosed Mole!

"My first number is a tune off my second album 'What's All That Weird Shit On Your Face?'"

Digging beneath us all are creatures that defy the laws of man. Nearly sightless furry things that burrow and eat, all the while resembling something that looks like a nightmare’s daydream. Moles and Shrews are weird. Fact. Tiny eyes. Big claws. Very few sounds. All of the worst parts of the Bible in a tiny, pellet-making package.

The Star-Nosed Mole looks like a mixture of a Hamster and Cthulhu.

They’re actually incredible little things, ripping their way through the underground eating up to their own body weight in a day (they are considered the fastest eaters in the animal kingdom, a study which had to be REAL exciting) and using the highly sensitive star/tentacles/horrorshow on its face to discern what is edible. They’ll quickly devour most anything they can.

The Star-Nosed Mole is a perfect example of how a creature adapts to its own specific purpose. It is a digging and eating machine. It has no need to make cute sounds because no one talks beneath the earth. Its eyes are merely decorative because seeing in zero light is overrated. As a result it doesn’t have to win any beauty contests and it most certainly wont.

But if you try to out-dig or out-eat it you’re in the wrong business, pal.

Quick Hits:

• If it were horse sized, we’d… BE BAFFLED BY ITS FACE, TERRIFIED OF ITS CLAWS.
• If it had wings, it’d… FLY AROUND BLIND AS HELL SWINGING ITS MADNESS PAWS.
• If granted human intellect, it’d… DIG TO THE CORE AND EAT THE ELOI.
• If ‘Day of the Animals’ happened, we’d… PROBABLY HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR, THOUGH ANYTHING SLOWER THAN THEM WOULD BE ANNIHILATED.

Have a peek. It’s almost cute. It’s also almost fear incarnate:

Remember: The Star-Nosed Mole is a perfect example of how a creature adapts to its own specific purpose. It is a digging and eating machine.