Methods of combating mole rats. Common mole rat Do mole rats have eyes?

Seeing small mounds of earth in the beds, it may seem that a mole has appeared on the site. But, most likely, a mole rat lives there.

Unlike the mole, this animal causes much more damage and can destroy the entire crop of root crops.

Activity decreases in winter, but it is not typical for him to hibernate. The animals are larger than moles, which have five toes with claws on their paws, they are more powerful and more developed, since they dig their holes with their front paws. The forelimbs of the mole rat are weaker and do not participate in digging holes.

Several species are known. The animal that annoys summer residents is most likely a mole rat. The giant is a very rare species, listed in the Red Book. It is found in the foothills of the Caucasus range, Moldova and southern Ukraine. The number of individuals of this species and its habitat are declining, this is due to active human agricultural activities. Very rarely it can be found in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. The sandy species has a light color, allowing it to blend with the soil, and is distributed along the lower reaches of the Dnieper. Lives in arid steppe expanses and natural black soils.

Description

Almost never rises to the surface of the earth. A fairly large rodent weighing about a kilogram, about 30 cm long, the head is flattened, the eyes of the animal have atrophied in the process of evolution as unnecessary. It has no tail, the body of the animal is covered with dense, coarse hair. Digs holes using rather menacing-looking incisors. The growth of the front teeth does not stop throughout life. The structure of the lips is unique, designed so that when digging a hole, no soil gets into the mouth.

Natural habitat is steppe and forest-steppe. Widely distributed in Ukraine, which is considered its homeland, it is included in the Red Book of Ukraine. It prefers areas of the steppe with dense vegetation; it does not go far into the forest, choosing forest edges or forest belts along fields.

Conservation status

A significant number of species and subspecies of these animals are representatives of the Red Book of Russia and Ukraine. In their natural habitat they are protected by the state.

Lifestyle

Leads an underground lifestyle, practically never rising to the surface. Sets up a complex two-level system of burrows. Looks for food at the top, lives below and stores supplies for the winter. The depth of occurrence in winter can reach 3 meters. This helps to determine the place where the animal’s main housing is located: there is clay in the soil excavated to the surface.

It digs its passages with its front incisors, raking the earth under itself, then turns around and pushes the soil out with its head like a shovel. When the earth becomes too far away, it arranges a new exit to the surface. Active mainly at night. During the day, all residential passages are clogged with earth. It does not arrange storage facilities for supplies, using dug passages for this purpose.

These animals are loners, and when they meet uninvited guests on their territory, they start real fights among themselves. They live in families, including a male and a pair of females. Family groups are very stable and disintegrate only if one of the animals dies.

Reproduction

Animals reach sexual maturity by the third year of life. Mole rats produce offspring once a year at the end of winter or beginning of spring. In each family group, only one female produces offspring per year. There are never more than three cubs in a litter. As they grow up, young animals disperse throughout the territory.

Males do this underground, females on the surface, which is why a large number of them die in the first year of life. For this reason, a large number of males live independently and do not participate in population reproduction. When searching for a new place of residence, they are able to cover distances of several hundred meters.

Natural enemies

Due to the fact that mole rats spend almost their entire lives underground, their number of enemies is small. They are hunted in their natural habitat by the steppe ferret. Young animals searching for new habitats are attacked by foxes and birds of prey.

Relationships with a person

Mole rats are pests of agricultural land, so to put it mildly, people’s attitude towards them is complex. Destroys potato, carrot and beet crops cultivated in gardens and dachas. Does not disdain flowers whose rhizomes form bulbs. In the spring, when there is not enough food, it feeds on seeds and young shoots of agricultural crops. How else can a person treat an animal that is capable of destroying the fruits of hard, painstaking work?

Harm in the garden

The appearance of a rodent in a garden or summer cottage is a real problem. This creature can deprive you of your potato, carrot and beet harvest. A logical question arises - how to get rid of the voracious mole rat in the country house or garden. It eats plant tops and stores root crops for the winter. One adult can ruin the work of an entire summer season. More than 10 kg of root crops were found in the burrows, and the rodent is satisfied with more than one vegetable storehouse. The more well-groomed the garden, the greater the desire of these animals to settle on it.

Radical ways to get rid of mole rats

As soon as a mole rat appears in the garden, summer residents begin to think about how to get rid of the country terrorist. It is difficult to remove it from the garden, because the animal almost does not appear on the surface, and thanks to its well-developed sense of smell, it can avoid traps set for it. The fight against him turns into a battle for the harvest.

Excessive humanity can undo the work of an entire season. You can use poison if you are not afraid of killing your pets. Install special traps, although animals show miracles of ingenuity, bypassing the most sophisticated traps. Before using the trap, it is advisable to rid it of human odor, for example: rub it with onions. The hope that the mole rat will not pass by the trap increases.

Homemade repellent devices

You can take advantage of the animal’s natural caution and good sense of smell. Place rags soaked in liquids that have a strong, unpleasant odor in the dug passages. For example: diesel fuel, kerosene, etc. This will create discomfort, scare the animal and perhaps it will leave your area. Garden owners have noticed that the rodent does not like noise.

A very simple method: meter-long pieces of reinforcement are driven into the ground so that 30-40 cm remains on the surface. An empty metal tin can is placed on top of the pin. The wind blowing through the area moves the cans and the sound travels through the fittings into the ground. On dacha forums they suggest introducing exhaust gases from a car engine into a hole. This method is harmful to the soil; the exhaust contains heavy metals that can seriously poison the soil, and through it your “saved” crop.

Setting traps

Rodents are afraid of drafts and experienced gardeners take advantage of this. They tear up the hole by about a meter and set up a trap, covering the passage with plywood. The owner will come to close the hole to prevent a draft, and perhaps fall into a trap.

Installation of ringing, rattling and vibrating homemade devices

Pests cannot tolerate loud sounds, but your neighbors in a suburban area will react negatively to the continuously heard “trill” of a mechanical howler. Devices that cause ground vibration are preferable here, but it is difficult to obtain the necessary power to protect the entire area.

Water fight

If you decide to drive a rodent out of a hole by flooding the passages, do not expect that a few buckets will be enough for you. Dig holes (several) and fill them with water using a watering hose. It’s good if it is possible to supply water to several points at once. Sooner or later the animal will come to the surface - don’t yawn.

Mole rats and the constant fight against them are the lot of many dacha owners, so you need to be fully prepared.

Installation of an ultrasonic repeller

If inhumane methods of control are unacceptable to you, you do not want to use mousetraps or poisonous baits, there is another way. An electronic device that repels rodents has gone on sale in the retail chain. The method is based on the propagation of ultrasonic vibrations, which causes anxiety and fear in rodents, and disorients them in space.

The disadvantage is that to achieve the effect, one or two devices on the site are not enough; you need to buy several. These control devices are effective and do not require other methods. After some time, pests will leave an area that has become uncomfortable, even if this area has a good food supply. The ultrasonic method will drive mole rats and other agricultural pests away from your site. This method is more humane and you don't have to kill these cute animals.

Mole rats are a genus of mammals from the mole rat family of the order of rodents. Includes about 4 species, of which the most common are the common and giant mole rats. Leads an underground lifestyle.

Description of the rodent

The body length is from 23 to 30 cm, the tail is short. There are no ears, the eyes are atrophied and hidden under the skin, which is why the animal got its name. The legs are short, the hands and feet are slightly widened. The claws are large, but smaller than those of the zokor. The fur is short, thick, very soft, without lint. All sense organs are well developed, only vision is missing. Elongated tactile hairs grow near the mouth, on the cheeks, forehead, abdomen and behind the body.

Mole rats feed mainly on underground parts of plants: roots, rhizomes, bulbs and tubers. They also eat the above-ground parts of plants, which they drag into the burrow by the root.

Among the food plants that mole rats eat, Compositae, umbelliferous and legume crops predominate. For the winter, the animal makes large reserves (more than 10 kg).

The distribution area of this species includes Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. Mole rats live in steppes, forest-steppes and deserts.

The population density varies over a very wide range, reaching 20 or more individuals per hectare, and in general it is quite stable and not subject to sudden changes. The optimal population density of mole rats is 3 individuals per hectare; if the number of rodents decreases to 1-2 individuals per hectare, then the risk of population degradation increases. The population size of mole rats fluctuates with significant changes in environmental conditions, for example, both droughts and increased soil moisture, as well as plowing of land, have a negative impact on it.

Common species of mole rat

A large rodent with a body length of adults from 20 to 32 cm, weighing about 700 g or more. The body is elongated, cylindrical, the neck is not pronounced. The paws are greatly shortened, the tail is reduced, hidden under the skin. The head is flat, wide, and the shape at the top resembles the bayonet of a shovel. The eyes are reduced, hidden under the skin. The outer ear looks like a small cushion and is also hidden under the fur. The nose is covered with a bare horny sheath of black or brown color. The front incisors are large, protrude far forward beyond the mouth and are clearly visible. The fur is fawn-gray-brown, but in general the species is characterized by significant variability in color.

The species is distributed in the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Russia and Ukraine between the Dnieper and Volga, in Moldova. The southern border of the range runs along the Caucasus Range. The mole rat lives in areas with grassy vegetation, does not go far into forests, but can live on the edges, in forest belts, in clearings and next to forest roads. In plowed areas the number of individuals is small.

A large rodent with a body length from 25 to 35 cm, weighing about 1 kg. The upperparts are light, gray-fawn or ocher-brown. In older individuals, the top of the head is almost white. The belly is dark gray. Sometimes there are white spots on the stomach and forehead.

The species is endemic to the semi-deserts of the Caspian region of the north-eastern Ciscaucasia. Found near the Kuma, Terek and Sulak rivers. Mole rats, which live in a separate population beyond the lower reaches of the Ural River in Kazakhstan, are sometimes classified as a separate species, the Ural mole rat (Spalax uralensis).

Sexual dimorphism is not typical for mole rats.

Mole rats lead an underground lifestyle; they dig complex burrows up to 250 m long, at a depth of about 3.5 m. Mole rats come to the surface in very rare cases.

Mole rats chew through the ground with their strong front incisors, but do not dig. The lateral folds of the lips behind the incisors close the mouth tightly during this process. The animal pushes the chewed off earth under itself. Having accumulated a pile of soil, the mole rat turns around and pushes it to the surface with its wide shovel-shaped head. If the pile on the surface becomes very large, the mole rat seals the exit to it and digs a new one. During the day, the mole rat's residential burrows are always closed.

Rodents place food reserves in sections of regular passages, and do not build separate chambers for this. Having filled such a segment, the mole rat walls it up with soil from all sides. There are up to 10 such “storerooms” in each burrow. The area of the feeding area for an adult mole rat is 0.02-0.09 hectares, the length of feeding passages is up to 450 meters or more per individual. In addition, mole rats build a system of summer and winter nests.

Mole rats are active all year round and do not hibernate, but in winter their activity decreases. The peak of daily activity occurs at night and in the second half of the day.

Adult mole rats live separately and show strong aggression towards their relatives (their fights, as a rule, end in death). The population of mole rats has a certain social structure, consisting of family groups of 1 male and 1-2 females, whose burrows are connected by passages or arranged in a row. Such family groups are stable and disintegrate only after the death of one of the partners. Approximately half of the males live outside family groups and are completely excluded from the breeding process.

The average lifespan of mole rats ranges from 2.5 to 4 years; sometimes mole rats live up to 9 years. Young animals are characterized by high survival rate.

Mole rats breed once a year, in late winter or early spring. In each family group, only one female breeds at the age of 3-7 years. If there are two of them in a group, then in the spring the male leaves the area of the breeding female and creates a pair with the female, who will begin breeding next year. Babies are born at the end of February and until mid-May. There are 2-3 cubs in one litter. At the end of May, the resettlement of young mole rats begins and this process continues until autumn. Young males settle mainly underground, females - on the surface. For this reason, females in the first year of life are characterized by high mortality. The dispersal range ranges from a couple of tens to hundreds of meters.

Natural enemies

Mole rats are solitary animals. Adult mole rats live only in separate burrows. They are very careful and rarely fall into human traps.
The mole rat can cause damage to agricultural crops in vegetable gardens and household plots. Soil emissions make it difficult to carry out field work, for example, mechanized mowing of perennial grasses for hay, and spoil field roads. At the same time, it is difficult to fight the mole rat due to its underground lifestyle. For this purpose, mechanical traps and repellent devices are used.
The giant mole rat is a protected species listed in the Red Book of Russia and the IUCN Red List.

The mole rat's lifestyle is similar to that of a mole: it lives exclusively underground, digs long systems of passages, and pushes excess soil to the surface, forming unsightly mounds. But in general, this is a completely different animal, differing in appearance, body structure, behavioral characteristics, and even the nature of its harmfulness...

Mole rats(Spalax) is a genus of mammals of the mole rat family of the order of Rodents, leading an underground lifestyle. There are about 4 types in it.

Mole rats are small animals, only up to 30–32 cm long, without ears, without a pronounced neck, with atrophied eyes hidden under the skin, a very small inconspicuous tail and short gray fur. Unlike moles, which feed on insects, animals feed on plant foods - they eat rhizomes, roots, tubers, and bulbs. To get to the above-ground parts of plants, they are dragged into a hole by the root. They especially love legumes, umbelliferae, and asteraceae. The stems and leaves are eaten mainly in spring and early summer.

The burrow systems of mole rats are distinguished by tiers. The first tier is food, located at a depth of 20–25 cm from the soil surface. The second, includes connecting tunnels, summer and winter nests, supply storage, is located at a depth of 3 - 4 m.

If moles loosen the soil with their front paws, mole rats use powerful incisors. And the heaps of earth in the “blind rats’ lands” are larger than those of moles. The soil thrown to the surface reaches a mass of up to 10 kg and forms mounds with a diameter of about 50 cm.

Mole rats prefer isolation. When confronted, males fight until only one remains alive. But at the same time, for each male there are 1 - 2 females, with whom they coexist during the breeding season. An area of 1 hectare can be simultaneously inhabited by 3 to 20 (and sometimes more) animals.

The most active periods in the life of animals are March, April and May. By summer, and then in winter, their vital activity decreases significantly, but they do not hibernate.

Habitat

For its habitat, it most often chooses fields, steppes, forest belts, ravines, and virgin lands.

The mole rat's underground tunnel systems have two tiers. The first is located at a depth of no more than 25 cm from the surface and is food, the second is located at a depth of 3 - 4 meters. The second has nests for living in summer and winter, as well as storage for food supplies.

The mole digs the soil using its front paws, while the naked mole rat uses its strong incisors. The piles of earth are larger than those of moles. The mounds can have a diameter of up to 50 cm, and the earth thrown to the surface sometimes has a mass of no less, but about 10 kg.

A mole rat can cause a lot of damage in a dacha, and its destruction is very difficult, since the animal spends most of its life underground.

Lifestyle

The mole rat leads an exclusively underground lifestyle, emerging to the surface on rare occasions. It creates a highly branched two-tier system of burrows. The longest one is the upper “feeding” passage, which lies at a depth of about 20–25 cm. In addition to the feeding tier, the mole rat builds a system of summer and winter nests, as well as food storage areas. They are connected by passages to a second, deeper tier, which is up to 4 m long.

Making passages, the mole rat loosens the soil with the help of powerful incisors, and then moves it to the surface, where characteristic heaps of earth, the so-called “mole rats,” are formed. The weight of the ejected soil in one mole rat can exceed 10 kg, and the diameter - 50 cm. The length of the passages of one mole rat reaches 450 m.

The common mole rat eats plants, the basis of its diet being rhizomes, bulbs and tubers. In spring and early summer, it also feeds on above-ground parts of plants (stems and leaves). The mole rat prefers Asteraceae, Umbelliferae and Legumes.

The mole rat is also active in winter. In order not to die of hunger, he makes supplies for the winter. Acorns, rhizomes, bulbs of wild plants, potato tubers and even sugar beets were found in his underground storerooms. Moreover, the mole rat's reserves are considerable - their weight sometimes reaches 14 kg.

However, there are also living creatures that benefit from mole rats. Gophers, voles, hamsters and other animals live in abandoned mole rat tunnels.

Since the mole rat lives underground, it has few natural enemies, the main one being the steppe polecat, which can reach the mole rats in their own burrows. The young animals settling on the surface are hunted by foxes, dogs, birds of prey and crows.

The lifespan of this underground rodent is up to 9 years.

What does it eat?

If there is no harvest on your plot, then you should not blame all the blame on the mole. We need to decide which crops are missing. If these are potatoes, beets and carrots, then this is definitely the work of the “teeth” of the mole rat.

In addition, the animal is not averse to eating bulbous crops, so flowers that have corms instead of roots may also suffer. The mole rat also eats the above-ground part of the plant, pulling the bush underground.

The pest's favorite greens are peas, beans, beans, and carrot tops. If the animal has enjoyed the grass, then it will prepare the root crop for future use.

It is known that an adult is capable of eating as much food per day as it weighs, therefore, when excavating its winter reserves, up to 18 kg of potatoes and other root crops were discovered in different compartments. Dry berries and nuts can be supplies for the winter.

Reproduction of blind women

Lesser mole rats are solitary animals. The network of tunnels of one individual does not connect with the burrows of another.

Individuals of different sexes are found exclusively during the breeding season. The mating season for small mole rats begins in the spring and continues until summer. But today scientists do not know how blind women find partners and create pairs.

Mole rats give birth to offspring once a year. One female can have up to 6 cubs in a litter, but, as a rule, 3-4 babies are born. A blind woman feeds her offspring for 4 weeks.

Nothing is known about the life expectancy of small mole rats, as well as about their mating behavior.

Harm

Mole rat burrows

The activity of this pest leaves behind long, several-tiered passages in the garden, as well as underground storerooms in which the animal stores part of the crop grown by the owners in their gardens. As a rule, it eats the green mass first and stores the root crops for the winter. Even one mole rat is capable of taking away a considerable share of the harvest. If several individuals appear on the site, then you can forget about high yields of crops such as potatoes, onions, beets and carrots.

In addition, it digs quite large tunnels, with a diameter of 5 to 15 cm, due to which it damages some plants in the area. The lower tiers can be located at a depth of up to 3 meters, and the upper ones - at a depth of 10 cm. Such a system of underground passages often does not allow the normal development of many cultivated plants.

How to drive away a mole rat

Only one question arises when a common mole rat appears on a personal plot - how to get rid of the pest? For many, this becomes an overwhelming task. After all, the animal constantly hides in the ground and its presence, creating new mounds and destroying planted plants, only at night.

It is best to try to create conditions so that the animal leaves the land on its own. A lot of ways have been invented for this, but none of them guarantees that the animal will escape forever. But it’s still worth making every effort to get rid of the mole rat without shedding its blood.

One commonly used method is to flood its tunnel with water. But this may require too much water, since the animal’s underground passages are very branchy. But if the soil quickly absorbs moisture, this method is completely useless. Some try to smoke out their four-legged neighbor using smoke, pouring kerosene or fetid mixtures into the hole. Another way is to create constant noise in the area where it lives, which the common mole rat cannot tolerate. As an option, you can use an ultrasonic repeller.

Mole rats (Spalacidae)- a family of medium-sized rodents with a small number of species (the weight of the largest does not exceed 800-900 g). In the course of evolution, mole rats (Spalax) adapted to an exclusively underground lifestyle in steppe and semi-desert areas with fairly rich vegetation. Among the representatives of the life form of the “root-eater”, mole rats stand out in that their eyes have completely lost the ability to see. This is the only case of loss of vision in the order of rodents and the second among all mammals (another blind person is the marsupial mole living in Australia).

Mole rats dig long (up to 900 m), branched underground passages in several tiers up to 3-4 m deep. The upper galleries, where the animals live in the summer, serve to collect food (rhizomes, bulbs, tubers). In the lower tier there is a wintering chamber and storerooms with parts of plants carefully laid out and covered with earth. When digging, rodents use powerful incisors, acting like an excavator bucket. The earth is pushed out with a shovel-shaped head. The nose of mole rats is covered with keratinized skin that protects from mechanical damage. In addition, such a nose is convenient for compacting the walls of burrows.

The incisors of mole rats, like those of all rodents, self-sharpen when gnawing, but this is not enough for rootworms: they also sharpen their teeth against each other. The structural features of the lower jaw and muscles allow mole rats to spread their lower incisors and move them back and forth by moving the blade one against the other.

One animal, who lived in captivity for a long time, achieved true skill in sharpening teeth. His home was an ordinary aquarium, the metal frame of which the mole rat learned to use. He stood on his hind legs, rested his upper incisors against the edge of the metal side, and literally gnawed it with his lower incisors. The mole rat used the glass walls of the aquarium to finely polish the sharp edge of its incisors. One can imagine the “grinding of teeth” that accompanied this procedure every time!

The special “sophistication” of sharpening and grinding the incisors of mole rats is due to the fact that it is with their incisors that they dig their extended burrows. This leads to rapid wear of the cutting surfaces and, accordingly, to the need for rapid growth of the cutters themselves. In captivity, the mole rat is forced to wear down its incisors on its own. If this is not done, then within a few days they will grow to such a size that the animal will not be able to close its mouth.

It is rare to see mole rats due to their secretive lifestyle. Many people mistake them for moles (even in areas where moles do not live), deceived by the appearance of the characteristic cone-shaped soil emissions, reminiscent of moles in shape.

In Russia, mole rats live in the forest-steppe and steppe from the border with Ukraine to the Volga - for example, the common mole rat (Spalax microphtalmus), and they are most numerous in the Kursk, Voronezh and Rostov regions. The largest species of this family is found in Dagestan - the giant mole rat (S. giganteus). In the second half of the 20th century, as a result of the plowing of almost all lands favorable for mole rats, the number of these rodents decreased, and in a number of areas they disappeared completely.

Having encountered a mole rat in nature, it is difficult to recognize in it an animal that belongs to a number of rodents, so surprisingly its entire structure is adapted to constant underground life. Only the presence of one pair of extremely strong incisors of a sharp, chisel-shaped shape, which, unlike other shrews, protrude expressively from the mouth, and the absence of fangs indicate that this animal belongs to the order of rodents. The upper lips of mole rats extend inside the oral cavity and form a kind of valve that reliably prevents soil from entering the mouth. A peculiar adaptation to the underground life of mole rats is their clumsy body with a very wide flattened spade-shaped head and short neck, undeveloped ears, which are not even visible from the fur and which look like folds of skin around a small ear opening. The eyes of mole rats are also completely atrophied and their remains are hidden under the skin. On both sides of the head there is a row of hard elastic bristles that act as a sensory organ. The nose of mole rats is wide, covered with a strong layer of very keratinized skin. The tail is very short and invisible in appearance. The legs are also very short. The mole rat differs from shrews such as moles in that its forelimbs do not have the appearance of digging organs. Mole rats dig numerous underground passages exclusively with the help of wide incisors, with which they bite into the soil. The loosening soil is pushed through with the head, like a shovel.
The body length of mole rats does not exceed 35 cm. The hair is short, thick, silky, and does not have a separate spine. The color is brownish-fawn, with a yellowish tint. The lower part of the body is colored the same as the upper.

Mole rats live in Ukraine in steppe and forest-steppe regions. They live in open spaces, remnants of virgin lands not occupied by cultivated plants, on the slopes of ravines, hay fields, etc., choosing predominantly chernozem soils covered with dense grassy herbaceous vegetation. Mole rats spend their entire lives in burrows that lie at a depth of 15-20 cm. The system of their underground passages is enormously long: it stretches for a distance of up to 400 m. Mole rats throw the earth from the holes to the surface, forming cone-shaped heaps that look like a molehill, only significantly larger in size (up to 40 cm in diameter and up to 30 cm in height). Such heaps are located close to one another, so behind them you can determine the direction of the underground passages of the mole rat. Having no permanent exit holes, these animals rarely come to the surface. To do this, each time they work out a special hole outward. Returning to the hole, carefully cover the exit with earth.

Mole rats are very vicious, often attacking each other, severely biting and inflicting serious injuries. When breaking through passages, they show extreme caution. In case of the slightest disturbance of silence, they hide and stop digging for a long time. Mole rats are exclusively herbivorous animals, feeding mainly on succulent roots, rhizomes, tubers, young roots of tree species, and only occasionally consuming green parts of wild plants. Penetrating into agricultural lands, they willingly consume potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.
They do not hibernate during winter, they just stop digging. In the autumn, when the soil has not yet frozen, mole rats make large reserves of plant food for the winter, mainly roots and rhizomes, depositing them in special feeding branches (pantries dug next to the nesting chamber).

Mole rats make nests for giving birth and raising babies at great depths (can reach 2 m or more). Here, once a year, in March, the female gives birth to two to four babies, which develop quickly. In the second half of May or early June, they already begin to live independently and even dig holes for themselves. If mole rats settle on cultivated land or in forest nurseries, they can cause significant losses to the national economy. In a potato field
One mole rat alone gnawed up to thirty bushes during the night. In the hayfields of perennial grasses, mole rats make mowing difficult with their releases of soil. But they cause especially great harm when stockpiling winter supplies. An interesting fact: in one mole rat's pantry, about 15 kg of supplies were found - 8 kg of pieces of oak seedling roots, 2 kg of acorns, 5 kg of potatoes, etc.

Even in the recent past, mole rats were numerous rodents on the territory of Ukraine and they were classified as especially harmful animals, but due to the economic development of free, unoccupied lands, mole rats lost their natural environment and their number has sharply decreased in recent decades. Currently, as rare species of animal fauna of Ukraine, they no longer threaten the human economy and are even listed in the Red Book, therefore, they are subject to protection.

Mole rats have few enemies; their underground lifestyle reliably saves them from many predators. Young animals that begin to disperse independently become victims of predators more often. The fur of mole rats, which had a good gray color with a silky sheen and strong flesh, was until recently prepared as decoration.