Voles and moles are often confused due to their similar size and tendency to live underground. While both creatures inhabit subterranean environments, they are distinct animals with different characteristics and behaviors. Understanding these differences can help identify which animal might be present in a garden or field.
Understanding the Vole
Voles are small rodents, often mistaken for mice. They typically have a stocky build, short legs, and a tail noticeably shorter than their body length. Their small eyes and ears are often partially concealed by their dense fur.
Voles are herbivores, primarily consuming plants, roots, seeds, and tree bark. They can cause damage to gardens by gnawing on the bases of young trees and shrubs, or by eating plant bulbs and tubers. Voles prefer habitats with dense vegetation, such as grassy fields, meadows, and sometimes home gardens, where they can find ample food and cover.
Voles create shallow tunnel systems just beneath the surface of the ground, often marked by visible runways or trails through the grass. These runways are narrow paths of flattened vegetation, leading to small, inconspicuous burrow entrances. Their activity is often indicated by these surface trails rather than significant mounds of excavated soil.
Understanding the Mole
Moles are subterranean insectivores. Their bodies are cylindrical, designed for efficient tunneling through soil. They have large, paddle-like front paws equipped with strong claws, perfectly adapted for digging.
Moles have tiny eyes that are often not visible externally, and their ears are typically internal. Their snout is pointed and sensitive, aiding them in detecting prey underground. The diet of a mole consists almost entirely of soil invertebrates, primarily earthworms, grubs, and other insect larvae.
Moles construct extensive networks of deep tunnels as they search for food. Their tunneling activity brings soil to the surface, forming characteristic volcano-shaped mounds known as molehills. These mounds are a clear sign of mole presence.
Key Differences and Identification
Voles possess small, visible eyes and ears, and their tails are short but distinct, often a few inches long. In contrast, moles have very small, often hidden eyes and no external ears, and their tails are typically very short and fleshy.
Their front limbs also differ significantly. Voles have small, rodent-like paws suitable for scurrying and some digging. Moles, however, are recognized by their remarkably large, outward-facing front paws, specialized for powerful digging. These shovel-like paws are a primary adaptation for their subterranean lifestyle.
The type of damage observed can indicate whether a vole or a mole is present. Vole activity often results in damage to plants, such as girdled tree bark or eaten roots and bulbs, along with visible surface runways. Mole activity, conversely, is characterized by raised ridges of soil marking their tunnels and distinct molehills on the surface, with minimal direct damage to plants themselves, as they are not eating vegetation.
Their tunneling habits also provide identification clues; voles create numerous small, inconspicuous burrow entrances and surface runways, which are essentially trails of matted grass. Moles, on the other hand, produce distinct, conical molehills formed from excavated soil pushed to the surface, and their tunnels often appear as raised ridges in lawns.