#blesmol

African Mole Rats:  So Much More Than Just the Naked Mole Rat

An intriguing tale of colonial life, surprising phylogenetic relationships and giant protruding incisors…

by Darren Naish

Mention the term ‘mole-rat’ (or molerat, or mole rat) and most people (zoologists included) will think of Heterocephalus glaber, the remarkable Naked mole-rat or Sandpuppy of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. But this is merely one of a whole radiation of African mole-rats, the species of which occur right across sub-Saharan Africa. 

The first thing we have to say is that we’re talking specifically here about bathyergid mole-rats or blesmols, and bathyergid mole-rats or blesmols alone: other morphologically and ecologically similar rodent species are also called mole-rats, but they’re not part of Bathyergidae.

Those species – they include the Eurasian blind mole-rats of the genera Nannospalax and Spalax – are included within a group termed Spalacinae or Spalacidae. They appear to be muroids – part of the enormous rodent group that includes mice, rats, hamsters, voles, gerbils and so on – and hence are not even close to blesmols...

(read more: Scientific American)