Possessing eyes completely covered with skin, the highly-fossorial eastern mole is perhaps the species most ideally structured for life underground.

Eastern moles exhibit extensive variation in both size and coloration. In the northern part of their range Scalopus are generally larger in size and slate colored whereas their western and southern counterparts are generally smaller, and brown to golden in color. As a rule, males are typically larger than females.

Largest range of any North American mole, occuring throughout much of the United States where soils are favorable. Ranges from northern Mexico to southeastern South Dakota in the west. East into Minnesota, Wisconsin, and south of the Great Lakes in Michigan, and into extreme southwestern Ontario. Found south through Ohio into Kentucky, then northeastern into Massachusetts and much of southern New England, and then south the the southernmost tip of Florida.