A body like a muskrat, nose like a hedgehog and feet like a duck-billed platypus, give this Russian mammal a comical appearance, but its plight is no laughing matter.
What is known is that the desman is uniquely designed for life in the water. No larger than a guinea pig, the animal’s compact, 8-inch body and cone-shaped head reduce resistance as its webbed feet paddle and rudderlike tail navigates. Its flexible trunklike nose is used as a periscope to breathe and sniff out danger above the surface. Glands in a pear-shaped bulge at the base of the desman’s tail produce a strong musk-scented oil, which the animal rubs on its silvery brown coat to increase its water resistance. The desman also uses the scent to mark its territory, helping it retrace its course in murky water and compensating for its rudimentary vision.
Above the surface, the desman builds an intricate network of dens in which to breathe more easily as well as sleep, eat and raise young while hiding from predators. Entered through underwater entrances, the dens are usually located at about 100-foot intervals around a lake, approximately the distance a desman can travel underwater in a minute. Paddling along a lake bottom in search of food, the desman clears trenches between its dens, which retain the animal’s musk scent. The desman’s primary prey—bottom-dwelling insects and their larvae, snails and small fish—are lured to these trenches by the aerated water and scent.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the animals were actively hunted for their soft, durable pelts. Homemakers used the desmans’ dried, musk-scented tails as sachets for their linens to deter moths. Later, the oil was used in perfumes and colognes.
At Klyazma wildlife sancturary, 120 miles east of Moscow the Desman have inhabited lakes there for 30 million years. Both species are on the Red List as vunerable species.
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