bbc.co.uk navigation

Mole peering out of its burrow

Burrower

Burrowing, or fossorial, animals live underground and for a variety of reasons. For some it is so they can feed on soil flora and fauna, for others it's to avoid predators or to hide away from the extremes of climate above ground. So, a British mole avoids the worst of the winter cold in its tunnels, whilst a naked mole rat in Africa gets protection from the heat. Both have some protection from roaming predators.

Watch video clips from past programmes (10 clips)

In order to see this content you need to have an up-to-date version of Flash installed and Javascript turned on.

View all 10 video clips

About

A fossorial organism is one that is adapted to digging and life underground such as the badger, the naked mole rat, and the mole salamanders Ambystomatidae. It is an adjective most commonly used to describe the habit of living underground, even if the physical adaptations are minimal — thus, most bees and many wasps are called "fossorial Hymenoptera", and a great many rodents are considered fossorial. Some organisms are fossorial to aid in temperature regulation, while others utilize the underground habitat for protection from predators or food storage.

An animal is said to be subfossorial if it shows limited adaptations to a fossorial lifestyle.

Read more at Wikipedia

This entry is from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia. If you find the content in the 'About' section factually incorrect, defamatory or highly offensive you can edit this article at Wikipedia. For more information on our use of Wikipedia please read our FAQ.

BBC News about Burrower

  • Mouse burrowing 'in their genes' The burrowing behaviour of mice is driven by just a few genetic regions and not through learning, researchers say - with implications for our own behaviour.

Video collections

Take a trip through the natural world with our themed collections of video clips from the natural history archive.

BBC © 2013 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.

This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.