Never underestimate a mole.

It’s easy to have low expectations for these creatures. My own experience with moles is limited to the sight of their carcasses at my doorstep, laid there by our triumphant and generous cat. Stretched out on the cold bluestone, they look like little more than eyeless pouches of fur.

Ken Catania of Vanderbilt University has gone a long way to redeeming the mole. In the 1990s, he did some of the first studies of star-nosed moles, a species with 22 oddly finger-shaped tentacles flaring from its nostrils. He discovered that those tentacles are an exquisitely sensitive touch organ with 25,000 sense receptors. It uses this bizarre star to rapidly scan its tunnels for food, sweeping back and forth