Friday, April 25, 2008

I'm pink, deal with it.




Ah, the blind mole rat. A true Superbeast indeed. I often feel the blind mole rat's pain the next day after a night of imbibing. And I'm just as hairless.

Blind mole rats are truly blind. Their very small eyes are completely covered by a layer of skin. Unlike many other fossorial rodents, Blind mole rats do not have enlarged front claws and do not appear to use their forearms as a primary digging tool. Digging is almost exclusively conducted using their powerful front teeth, which are separated from the rest of the mouth by a flap of skin. When a blind mole rat closes its mouth, its incisors are still on the outside. It has been suggested that blind mole rats may have evolved from spalacids that used their front limbs to dig, because their olecranon process is relatively large relative to the rest of the arm. The olecranon process is a part of the ulna bone where muscles attach, and digging animals tend to have enlarged olecranon processes to provide a lot of surface for their large and powerful muscles to attach.

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