Moles are underground dwelling carnivores with a relatively simple diet: insects, specifically, soft underground insects. Moles primarily eat earthworms because of their high availability and also regularly munch on grubs and slugs. The mole occasionally eats plant materials such as seeds and roots, provided they are soft enough for the animal to chew.
The star-nosed mole, which lives in more aquatic areas, has a similar diet, but has also been known to consume small fish.- Though not entirely blind, the mole's sense of sight is very limited and, because it hunts for food in the dark underground, not directly useful for spotting prey. However, the mole's light-sensitive vision will tell the animal whether it has emerged at the surface, and thus, is far from the good hunting. The mole's sense of hearing can also help with this.
The primary hunting sense for the mole is smell. A mole can tell where it is going by sense of smell and identify the presence of food from long distances. In particular, the star-nosed mole has a remarkable sense of smell and can identify an object as food, then eat it, more quickly than any known land mammal. - Sometimes, a mole finds food in its own pantry. Moles are not nomadic and will create homes for themselves in the form of burrows hollowed into the ground, usually consisting of several connected "rooms." Whether building or exploring, the mole digs efficiently with large, shovel-like paws and in doing so, will often discover more earthworms than it is capable of eating at once. The mole will bite the worm in such a way that paralyzes it, then store as many as 20-30 worms in its burrow for later.
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