Rare blind mole spotted in Australian outback

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 17:28:08 GMT
BBC News - Science & Environment

The palm-sized creatures have silky golden locks, no eyes, a stumpy tail and flipper-like hands

The marsupial mole was spotted in the Great Sandy Desert.

An extremely rare blind, hairy mole has been spotted and photographed in the Australian outback.

The northern marsupial mole, or kakarratul, lives in one of the most remote parts of the nation and is so elusive that authorities don't even know how many there are.

Sightings of marsupial moles usually occur only a few times each decade.

This mole was stumbled upon by Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa Martu rangers - Aboriginal traditional owners who use cultural and local knowledge to look after their land - while they were working in the Great Sandy Desert, which is about 1,500km from Perth.

The creatures are so uncommon that their existence remains a mystery to most people, says desert wildlife expert Gareth Catt."[I know] somebody who spotted one but didn't know what it was - they thought it was a baby guinea pig," he tells the BBC. The burrowing animals live within sand dunes in isolated deserts and spend very little time on the surface.

People often think "There isn't a lot of life in the desert", Mr Catt says, but it is full of unique animals.

The thorny devil is one of the desert's many weird-looking species.

"A lot of wildlife in a desert if you spotted it out of context, and you didn't know what it was, it would look very unusual," he says.

"At the most extreme ends of the environment, it becomes really obvious when things change - that's what we're seeing in the desert."

Summarized by 59%, original article size 1459 characters