undeveloped "reptilian mammals"; some are seen rather as adaptations to regional climatic conditions. Going into a torpor when resting or during cold weather enables them to conserve energy and reduce urgent requirements for food. Similarly, they have developed particularly efficient kidneys, and most species do not need to drink water at all; in fact, they tend to drown easily if they fall into water. Habits and ecology Chrysochloridae are subterranean, afrotherian mammals endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, and most of which are recorded from South Africa in particular. Other regions include Lake Victoria, Western Cape, and Namibia. They live in a variety of environments; forest, swamps, deserts, or mountainous terrain. However, Chrysospalax species tend to forage above ground in leaf litter in forests or in meadows. Eremitalpa species such as Grant's golden mole live in the sandy Namib desert, where they cannot form tunnels because the sand collapses. Instead during the day, when they must seek shelter, they "swim" through the loose sand, using their broad claws to paddle, and dive down some 50 cm to where it is bearably cool. There they enter a state of torpor, thus conserving energy. At night they emerge to forage on the surface rather than wasting energy shifting sand. Their main prey are termites that live under isolated grass clumps, and they might travel for 6 kilometres a night in search of food. They seek promising clumps by listening for wind-rustled grass-root stresses and termites' head-banging alarm signals, neither of which can be heard easily above ground, so they stop periodically and dip their heads under the sand to listen. Most other species construct both foraging superficial burrows and deeper permanent burrows for residence. Residential burrows are relatively complex in form, and may penetrate as far as a metre below ground and include deep chambers for use for refuge, and other chambers as latrines. They push excavated soil up to the surface, as in mole-hills, or compact it into the tunnel walls. They feed on small insects and earthworms or small vertebrates such as lizards or burrowing snakes. They depend on their sense of hearing to locate much of their prey, and the cochleas of a number of golden mole species have been found to be long and highly coiled, which may indicate a greater ecological dependence on low frequency auditory cues than we see in Talpid moles. Morphology Golden Moles share a number