Despite the poorly developed eyes, star-nosed moles have an intricate system to detect prey and understand their environment. During exploration, the mole's star-like appendage produces brief touches which compress Eimer’s organ against objects or substrate. When foraging, moles search in random patterns of touches lasting 20–30 . Catania and colleagues demonstrated that the tactile organ of the star-nosed mole is preferentially innervated by putative light touch fibers. When the outer appendages of the star come into slight contact with a potential food source, the nose is quickly shifted so that one or more touches are made with the fovea (the two lower appendages; 11th pair) to explore objects of interest in more detail – especially potential prey. This foraging behavior is exceptionally fast, such that the mole may touch between 10 and 15 separate areas of the ground every second. It can locate and consume 8 separate prey items in less than 2 seconds and begin searching again for more prey in as little as 120 ms, although the average time is 227 ms.