The Golden Mole: and Other Living Treasure: 'A rare and magical book.' Bill Bryson

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Most other species construct both foraging superficial burrows and deeper permanent burrows for residence. With their powerful forelegs and webbed back feet, they are described by scientists as ‘spectacularly autapomorphic’. It was my first encounter with Katherine Rundell’s natural history studies in the London Review of Books.

Katherine Rundell Books | Waterstones Katherine Rundell Books | Waterstones

In 1964, Alberto Simonetta, a professor at the Florence Institute of Zoology, was sifting through the contents of a disused bakery oven in Somalia. Consequently, different species seldom coexist and compete for resources, even though their distribution may be broadly sympatric. Not just the Principe scops-owl, native to a West African island with a human population of less than 8,000, but a new type of water shrew in the British Isles. Golden Moles share a number of features, varying by species, seldom seen elsewhere among living mammals, including three forearm long-bones, hyoid- mandible articulation, and a hypertrophied malleus. The male rufous hummingbird has an iridescent orange bib, like a Renaissance ruff rendered in Technicolor; when trying to attract a mate, it fluffs up its neck feathers and soars into the sky, then dives down so fast you can hear the air part around it.In this respect there is some apparent convergent evolution to burrowing reptiles in the family Amphisbaenidae.

Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure - NHBS The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure - NHBS

When maintaining golden moles in captivity, room temperature is acceptable in moderate climates, but it is advisable to keep them in a temperature-controlled room if daily room temperatures drop below 15C or rise above 30C. At Wakkerstroom, the Highveld golden mole ( Amblysomus septentrionalis) is found only in grasslands and around marshes, whereas Sclater’s golden mole ( Chlorotalpa sclateri) is restricted to scrub associated with montane cliffs and gorges (Roberts 1951).But this is a 21st-century bestiary, and rather than trying to slot animals, birds and fish into a Christian worldview, Rundell – author of wondrous children’s books and recently a thrilling biography of John Donne – is arguing urgently for their survival.

Golden Mole by Katherine Rundell | Waterstones The Golden Mole by Katherine Rundell | Waterstones

These two individuals, however, may have been a mother and her near-adult youngster, or the later capture could reflect colonization of the vacant burrow system by another individual.Wolves are not “deceptive, ravenous and morally backward” but “simply medium-large predators”, Rundell reminds us, and have been hunted “long after they ceased to be a physical danger to us”. We know very little about any golden mole, but about the Somali golden mole we know nothing at all; not what colour it is, nor whether it’s quietly abundant in some small and as yet unsurveyed patch of land, nor if the owl ate the last one. Moles in torpor should not be handled excessively, as this awakens them, and seems to result in considerable stress, in extreme cases leading to the cessation of eating and physiological decline of the individual.