Anatomy of the European Mole

The renowned Blumenbach Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a pioneering German comparative anatomist supposed that the eyes of the mole were granted by nature not so much for seeking light as for avoiding it. In its home, where it spends the greatest part of its life, the mole cannot use its eyes. However, its hearing, touch, and smell are so perfectly developed in it that sight is almost superfluous. The hearing is so acute that it has passed into a proverb. The membrana tympani eardrum is large, the ossicula auditus auditory ossicles are similar to human ones and very delicate, the labyrinthus inner ear structure is well defined, and the canales semicirculares semicircular canals are very large. The organs of smell are most delicately formed, equipped with many conchae turbinate bones and very large nerves that exit through a very large os cribrosum sieve-like bone/ethmoid bone. The sense of touch has its seat primarily in the snout, which receives branches of the fifth pair of nerves. Hence it appears that the eyes of the mole would be superfluous, unless it emerged onto the surface of the earth quite often. —