The Middle East blind mole rat or Israel mole rat (Spalax ehrenbergi or Nannospalax ehrenbergi) is a species of rodents in the Spalacidae family found in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkey. Its natural habitat is Mediterranean-type shrubbish vegetation, and it is threatened by habitat loss.
Recent cytogenetic studies have shown S. ehrenbergi may actually be a species group containing several cryptic species with chromosome numbers 2n=48, 2n=52, 2n=54, 2n=56 and 2n=58.
Famous quotes containing the words middle, east, blind, mole and/or rat:
“I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
where too many had laid out lights
that stuck to you and left a burn
that smarted into your middle age.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No such thing as a man willing to be honest—that would be like a blind man willing to see.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A rat eats, then leaves its droppings.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 85, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)