And it's got HUGE CLAWS, too.

[theweaselking]

The star-nosed mole gives a whole new meaning to the term "fast food."

A study published this week in the journal Nature reveals that this mysterious mole has moves that can put the best magician to shame: The energetic burrower can detect small prey animals and gulp them down with a speed that is literally too fast for the human eye to follow.

It takes a car driver about 650 milliseconds to hit the brake after seeing the traffic light ahead turn red. The star-nosed mole, operating in the Stygian darkness of its burrow, can detect the presence of a tasty tidbit, such as an insect larva or tiny worm, determine that it is edible and gulp it down in half that time.

The researchers discovered that their subject is not just a super-fast forager, but that it is moving about as fast as its brain and nervous system will allow. They calculate that when a mole touches a new object, its brain has about eight milliseconds to determine whether it is edible. Given the split millisecond timing involved, it is not surprising that the moles frequently make mistakes. In a series of trials where the researchers set out worm sushi, they found that the moles started to move in the wrong direction and had to suddenly reverse themselves one out of three times.

This inefficient behavior suggests that the moles are operating at, or near, the limit set by the speed which the mole's nervous system can process touch information, the researchers conclude.

The ability to handle prey so quickly and efficiently appears to provide the star-nosed mole with a real advantage: It should be able to live on a diet of smaller animals than its slower competitors, such as shrews and other kinds of moles found in the same area.

It's more difficult to subsist on a diet of small animals than it is to live on larger prey. For example, it is more efficient to kill a 1,000-pound beef cow for food than 125 eight-pound rabbits. That is because it takes substantially more time and energy to kill and consume the rabbits. Ecologists have formalized this relationship with a factor called prey profitability. By reducing its handling time to a fraction of a second, the star-nosed mole may be able to achieve a net energy "profit" with a diet of insect larvae and other food sources. Of course, that doesn't mean it turns up its nose at larger prey, like long, luscious earthworms.

Comments

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

That's some cthuloid stuff right there.