I really like subterranean animals, but there are so few good pictures! I was surprised to find out that these moles were alive after the photographer found them while gardening. They look so vulnerable!

(I’m getting better at predicting what taxa an animal may belong to, but for the first time in a while, I still had to look up the superorder of a mammal, I wasn’t sure if moles were Euachontoglires, the superorder that includes rodents and primates and their allies, or Laurasiatherians, which is composed of, among other things, bats, carnivorans (cats, dogs, walruses, etc), pangolins, and ungulates), or if they were a member of a completely different superorder. It turns out they are a member of Laurasiatheria, in the order Soricomorpha (which also include shrews and the rare solenodon), which seems to mean they’re more closely related to whales, bears, and bats than any mouse. WELL, NOW I KNOW THAT.)

Via Tracy Lee Carroll’s Flickr photostream.