The Senkaku mole also known as the Ryukyu mole, is a species of mammal

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

 in the Talpidae

Talpidae

The family Talpidae includes the moles, shrew moles, desmans, and other intermediate forms of small insectivorous mammals of the order Soricomorpha...

 family. It was formerly classified as being monotypic

Monotypic

In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group with only one biological type. The term's usage differs slightly between botany and zoology. The term monotypic has a separate use in conservation biology, monotypic habitat, regarding species habitat conversion eliminating biodiversity and...

 within the genus Nesoscaptor. It is endemic to the Uotsuri-jima ' onMouseout='HidePop("32484")' href="/topics/Hiragana">hiragana

Hiragana

is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

: うおつりじま) of the disputed territory of Senkaku Islands

Senkaku Islands

The , also known as the Diaoyu Islands or Diaoyutai Islands or the Pinnacle Islands, are a group of disputed uninhabited islands in the East China Sea...

, also known as the Diaoyutai Islands . Owing to the territorial dispute between Japan and China, the mole is known as the Diaoyutai mole in Chinese.

Ecological threats

Its existence is threatened by habitat loss, due to the introduction of domestic goats in 1978; the goats now number more than 300 on this tiny island.

External links

• EDGE:: Mammal Species Information(Nesoscaptor uchidai)
• センカクモグラ（絶滅危惧種情報検索） - 環境省生物多様性センター.