Cape Dune Mole Rat - Diet and Behaviour

Diet and Behaviour

Like all mole rats, this species is strictly herbivorous. Their diet consists largely of grass and sedges pulled down into the burrow by the roots, although they also eat bulbs and tubers from local plants such as Albuca and cape tulips. Since they almost never travel above ground, they are neither clearly nocturnal or diurnal, and may be active at any time of the day, although their peak activity seems to be during the afternoon.

Unusually for a blesmol, the Cape dune mole rat is not a social animal, with each individual having its own, isolated, burrow system. While most other blesmols dig through soil using their large, chiselling incisor teeth, the loose, sandy soil of their native environment makes this approach less effective for Cape dune mole rats, which instead dig primarily with their claws, kicking the sand behind their bodies and eventually pushing it up to the surface as a molehill. The burrows are entirely sealed, with no access to the surface, and stretch for between 50 and 420 metres (160 and 1,380 ft), over an area of around 0.27 hectares (0.67 acre). A single mole rat has been estimated to be able to excavate up to 500 kilograms (1,100 lb) of soil in a month, under ideal conditions.

Such burrows consist of numerous tunnels that the mole rat uses to search for food, and a few, deeper chambers used for nesting, food storage, and as latrines. Most tunnels are between 35 and 65 centimetres (14 and 26 in) below ground, but there are often a few blind-ending passages running as deep as 2 metres (6 ft 7 in), into which the animal retreats to escape from mole snakes and other predators, blocking the tunnel behind itself as it does so. The burrows are protected from extremes of weather, and are constantly humid and hypoxic.