A dog made the discovery of a lifetime when it discovered an animal believed to be extinct after it wasn’t seen for nearly 90 years.
The collie had been deployed by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) as a scent detection dog in a yearslong and nearly hopeless pursuit of finding traces of the De Winton’s golden mole. This shimmering mole rarely appears above ground and was last seen in 1936.
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The blind moles live almost entirely underground and don’t leave behind tunnels like other species of moles. They appear to “swim” through the sand, according to a press release from EWT, and their extremely sensitive hearing alerts them to vibrations above ground, allowing them to burrow into the ground without being seen.
I did wonder about this and I’d assume Victorian naturalists bagged a few that are still around but they probably smell more of formaldehyde and pipe smoke (a bit like the Victorian naturalists) but dogs are very well-atuned to smells, so that might not be an issue. It’s more likely that they used a related species which would likely be close enough. How they caught one after sniffing it out is probably another tale again.