Mole-rats Sentence Examples

All the mole-rats of the genus Spalax are characterized by the want of distinct necks, small or rudimentary ears and eyes, and short limbs provided with powerful digging claws.

Mole-rats are easily recognized by the peculiarly flattened head, in which the minute eyes are covered with skin, the wart-like ears, and rudimentary tail; they make burrows in sandy soil, and feed on bulbs and roots.

Indeed, despite the fact that they present much diversity of habit - some being arboreal, as the squirrels, many of which are provided with expansions of skin or parachutes on which they glide from tree to tree; some cursorial, as the hares; others jumpers, as the jerboas; others fossorial, as the mole-rats; and others aquatic, as the beavers and waterrats - no important structural modifications are correlated with such diversity of habit.

The beavers (Castoridae) are restricted to the northern hemisphere, whereas the dormice (Gliridae) and the mole-rats (Spalacidae) are exclusively Old World forms, the latter only entering the north of Africa, in which continent the former are largely developed.