The naked mole rat sparks the deepest interest of researchers. Image Shutterstock Unjustly so, says ecologist Francisca Virtuoso. who aims to correct this through her project Love the Ugly. On Resource-online, she writes a beautiful story about an ugly animal every three weeks.
Text Francisca Virtuoso
Naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber)
Neither a mole nor a rat, the naked mole rat is a tiny embryo-looking rodent that behaves more like an insect. This fragile looking mammal may cause repulsion among the common public, but it sparks the deepest interest of researchers, thanks to its fascinating superpowers.
The looks: why so weird looking
Naked mole rats are bald, wrinkled, embryo-looking, pinkish little rodents, with tiny eyes, no external ears, and huge front teeth that never stop growing. These fascinating beings live mostly underground, coming up only at the end of the rainy season, when the soil is nice and soft. The underground world does not require acute vision, and so their eyes are so tiny that they are actually virtually blind. To know where to go, these rodents rely on their sense of smell and touch.
Due to their subterranean lives, naked mole rats don’t need any hairs to protect them from the sun. However, they are not completely hairless. They have long whiskers that are sensitive to vibrations and help with their orientation, and tiny little hairs between their toes, which serve as little brooms to sweep the soil as they busily build their tunnels. Their big teeth and immense jaw power, are used for tunnel digging, root consumption and to fight off intruders.
The mammal that wishes to be an insect
Mole rats are the only eusocial mammals known to date, structuring their colonies as some insects do. They live in colonies of around 75 individuals (and can reach up to 300!) where every member has a clear role. The only ones allowed to breed are a few lucky males and the one female queen. But this is no easy monarchy! The role of queen is not passed down through generations. Queens need to fight for their position throughout their lives. Once the hierarchical position is established, the queen will expand the space between her vertebrae to make herself bigger, and may reach twice the weight of the other colony members.
The remaining members are assigned to tasks such as caring for the pups, digging tunnels, collecting food, or defending their burrows. Naked mole rats will work in chains, kicking the soil to each other, until they reach an exit. Likewise, if they find a yummy piece of food, they send signals through whistles and vibrations for the chain of scouts to find the food source. Thanks to this extreme organization, they manage to successfully consume their favorite roots, sweet potatoes.
Gardening experts: ecological relevance
If you ever find yourself in the dry semi-desert in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia, Kenya or Ethiopia, look out for little fist-sized holes in the ground, out of which soil might be spit out once in a while. You’ve found a naked mole rat burrow, a complex network of tunnels that can go up to the size of a football field, with over 3 km of connected tunnels.
The social and spatial organization of naked mole rats comes in handy for their gardener expertise. Through their hard work, they blend soil, vegetation, urine, faces and roots, into a highly nutritious compost. They then “spit” it out of their burrow, creating mounds that become hotspots of aerated high concentrations of minerals, which retain more water than the surrounding soil. This boosts the diversity of plants, influencing the composition of plant communities.
Researching their superpowers
This fascinating species shows several superpowers that could potentially change the life of humans. Naked mole rats are very resistant to cancer, thanks to a complex sugar that prevents cells from clustering together and forming tumors. They also feel pain differently than other mammals, resisting burns, acid, and heat inflicted pain. These rodents do not need to drink water, as they get all the water content from the food they consume. More impressively, naked mole rats can live with no oxygen for up to 18 minutes This leads to extremely high levels of CO2 in their clumped up burrows, to which they have adapted by fueling their vital organs with fructose.
Finally, they age very well. Naked mole rats are not only the longest-lived rodent, reaching up to 30 years of age, but they also show no signs of neurodegeneration, nor do they show a drop in fertility with age. The queen of the colony may give birth to 1000 offspring during her time as a fertile royal, producing 27 pups at a time, which does not decline with age. We are still investigating how they can achieve all these amazing feats and how we could adapt some of these impressive superpowers to improve human lives!
Francisca Virtuoso is a PhD candidate in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. Next time in Love the Ugly, learn about the gelatinous looking blobfish. Is there an ugly animal you would like to see in the spotlight? Send a message via @love_the_ugly.
