Not everything is as scary as it looks, like one curious-looking critter known as the star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata), which calls Ontario home.

This semiaquatic mammal can be found in wet lowland areas across a wide swath of North America spanning the entire Great Lakes region, the Eastern seaboard of the United States, and most of Atlantic Canada — with Ontario smack-dab at the centre of this distribution range.

But you're probably less interested in this hamster-sized predator's habitat as much as the rather upsetting-looking red fleshy nose with 22 flared appendages protruding from its face, from which the star-nosed mole draws its name.

Star-nosed moles' namesake sniffers — which look kind of like the explodey-faced Demogorgon from Stranger Things — are lined with a staggering 25,000 tiny sensory receptors in touch organs, known as Eimer's organs.

This face-feely organ is pretty important, as the star-nosed mole is effectively blind with its poorly developed eyes. It has been described as 100 times as sensitive to touch as a human finger, and acts as the primary sensory input for these fascinating animals.

Despite what you'd think would be a disadvantage in a lack of functional sight, the mole's incredible sensory abilities through this highly-evolved receptor-packed nose actually make this species a capable hunter, preying on small invertebrates like terrestrial and aquatic insects, worms, crustaceans, mollusks, and even some amphibians and small fish.

In fact, they're able to smell prey underwater through a complex method of exhaling air bubbles and then re-inhaling them to detect objects or the presence of prey — kind of like a smell-based version of the sonar used by other aquatic predators.

The star-nosed mole has been reported as the fastest-eating mammal in the animal kingdom, identifying and chomping down on its prey in a combined 120 milliseconds. According to a 2005 report in science journal Nature, the first part of that calculation — deciding whether something is food or not — takes approximately eight milliseconds, which is the maximum speed limit that neurons can transmit information.

If any of this interests you, here's a David Attenborough-narrated video with even more impressive facts about the star-nosed mole.

So, if you can get over the rather unsightly appendage, these little guys are, pound for pound, some of the coolest in Canada.

And while you might think I've ruined your day with photos of this bizarre-looking animal, I promise you I am not kidding when I say that one of my colleagues actually thinks these things are cute.

What do you think of the star-nosed mole?