Description
The Cape dune mole rat is the largest of all the blesmols, measuring 27 to 35 centimetres (11 to 14 in) in head-body length, with a short, 3 to 4 centimetres (1.2 to 1.6 in) tail. Males are generally much heavier than females, weighing anything from 570 to 1,350 grams (20 to 48 oz), compared with typical female weights of 590 to 970 grams (21 to 34 oz).
Both sexes are sturdy, large-bodied rodents, with blunt snouts, cylindrical torsos and short limbs. The forefeet are heavily adapted for digging, with powerful curved claws. To enable to move more quickly through tight tunnels, the body has few visible external features; for example, there are no pinnae or scrotum, and the penis retracts into a concealed sheath. Lip-like flaps of skin are able to close behind the incisors, preventing soil from falling into the mouth. The eyes are small, but not permanently closed.
Unlike its relative the naked mole rat, the Cape dune species has a thick pelt of soft fur over its entire body. It is cinnamon-brown with greyish underparts, and few, if any markings. Like other blesmols, the Cape dune mole rat has a relatively low body temperature for its size, of about 35 °C (95 °F), and is not able to tolerate cold weather above ground.
Read more about this topic: Cape Dune Mole Rat
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)