ORDER OF INSECT-EATING ANIMALS 



(luscctivora) 



]HE order Insectivora includes the small insect-eating mammals, the most 

 familiar being the Mole and the Shrew. This order is a large one with many 

 families which often do not bear xevy much resemblance to one another. 

 In North America only two families are found, the Talpida or Moles, and the 

 Soricida or Shrews. The North American Insectivores, and to a greater 

 or less extent the other members of the order, present the following char- 

 acters. The snout is long and projects beyond the lower jaw; the feet have five 

 toes, provided with claws, and the animal is plantigrade or sub-plantigrade; 

 the body is covered with soft fur; the teeth are numerous and the cusps sharp 

 and jirominent, but the differentiation into incisors, canines and molars is 

 not carried out so far as in higher orders; clavicles are present; musk glands 

 are present; and the animals are almost strictly insect and animal feeders. In both the 

 North American families the eyes are exceedingly small and the ears are minute or 

 rudimentarv. 



THE MOLE FAMILY 



( Talpida) 



OLES furnish one of the strangest and most interesting marvels of Nature's 

 handiwork. Here is a group of mammals destined from birth to life-long 

 blindness; spending their whole lives in subterranean darkness; digging, 

 digging, digging, in order to obtain the food necessary for their subsistence; 

 rendering to the farmer a service that is simply inestimable in its value, yet 

 regarded as animals worthy only of complete extemiination. When of a 

 morning we look upon the little ridges of new-turned soil disfiguring our 

 lawns, we instinctively say " Those wretched moles again! " forgetting that 

 the little shovellers have simply been working where they best could find 

 their food. It is true that sometimes the tunnels dug by moles admit of the 

 incursions of rodents which injure tubers, roots, and planted seeds; but it 

 has yet to be proved that the harm done by Moles is not more than offset by their destruc- 

 tion of cutworms, wireworms, and other noxious ]:)ests of the husbandman. 



So highly specialized are the Moles for a burrowing life that they possess structures 

 found in no other mammals and consequently are quite easily identified. The very large 

 fore feet, minute eyes and ears, short, thick tail, and velvety fur are strictly Mole char- 

 acteristics. 



The Moles of America are now classified by naturalists in five genera. Mr. Hartley 

 H. T. Jackson, of the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey, in "A Review of the American 

 Moles " says: " Moles occur rather generally in eastern North America along the Atlantic 

 and Gulf coasts from Labrador to Florida, and in northeastern Tamaulipas, Mexico, and 

 range westward to Manitoba and northeastern Colorado. Within this area arc found three 

 genera, Scalopus, Parascalops, and Cotidylitra. West of this area no Moles are found until 

 the Pacific coast region is reached. There, two other genera, Scapanns and Ncnrotriclius, 

 occur, their ranges being confined mainly to the humid and semi-humid region west of the 

 Cascade Range, and the Sierra Nevada, from southern British Colimibia to northern Lower 

 California." 



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