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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 03/07/2009 : 20:54:43
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The Blesmol, or naked mole rat, is a genus of rodent famous for its magnificent uglitude and strangeness, and for being about the only non-herp critter admired by our own Filthy.
Eeew! A face only a blind queen-mother could love.
Blemsols are blind, and are the only known mammals which are not warm-blooded. Some species of naked mole rats live underground in a society divided into chaste workers and a single pair of reproducing queens and kings.
The mole rat has sets of sabre-like incisors, and powerful jaws. It has been known to chew concrete.
All in all, naked mole rats are splendid examples of why evolution (not the theory, but the process) is disgusting, evil, and should be stopped.
Except for the fact that it looks as though the study of blemsols may help humans to live longer:Naked Mole Rats May Hold Clues To Successful Aging
ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2009) — Naked mole rats resemble pink, wrinkly, saber-toothed sausages and would never win a beauty contest, even among other rodents. But these natives of East Africa are the champs for longevity among rodents, living nine times longer than similar-sized mice. Not only do they have an extraordinarily long lifespan, but they maintain good health for most of it and show remarkable resistance to cancer.
Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are studying mechanisms that enable the prolonged good health and slowed aging of naked mole rats in their large colony at the university's Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies. In the March 3 print edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists report on another unusual feature of the animals — tissues of the naked mole rat are remarkably efficient at discarding damaged proteins and thereby maintaining stable, high-quality proteins. |
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/07/2009 21:11:49
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Zebra
Skeptic Friend
USA
354 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2009 : 21:13:07 [Permalink]
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Weird. Wikipedia has another page on them under a different name, & those pages aren't linked. (Yet. Someone needs to fix that.)
This page gives some other interesting details:
"also known as the sand puppy" (does that make them cuter?)
"highly unusual set of physical traits...including a lack of pain sensation in its skin" - "The skin of naked mole rats lacks a key neurotransmitter called Substance P that is responsible in mammals for sending pain signals to the central nervous system"
"...can move backward as fast as they can move forward" (that would be useful, I suppose)
"Their lips are sealed just behind their teeth while digging to avoid filling their mouths with soil" (OK, soil is gross to eat. Turns to mud-sauce.)
"...unique among mammals in that it is effectively cold-blooded. It cannot regulate its body temperature in the typical mammalian fashion. Instead it relies solely on behavioural means to keep a constant temperature. When they're cold, naked mole rats will huddle together or bask in the shallow parts of their burrow systems. When they get too hot they retreat to the deeper, cooler parts of their tunnel system" (Ever been on a hot, crowded subway platform? I can see the urge to move into a cooler part of the tunnel.)
"The naked mole rat is well adapted for the limited availability of oxygen within the tunnels that are its habitat: its lungs are very small and its blood has a very strong affinity for oxygen, increasing the efficiency of oxygen uptake. It has a very low respiration and metabolic rate for an animal of its size, thus using oxygen minimally. In long periods of hunger, such as a drought, its metabolic rate can reduce by up to 25 percent." (Wonder if this is behind the longer lifespan. Remember the findings that feeding rats just enough to survive, making them lose weight & slow their metabolic rates, results in older...albeit less happy...rats.)
"Naked mole rat is one of the two species of mammals that exhibit eusociality. They have a complex social structure in which only one female (the queen) and one to three males reproduce, while the rest of the members of the colony function as workers. As in certain bee species, the workers are divided along a continuum of different worker-caste behaviors instead of discrete groups.[4] Some function primarily as tunnellers, expanding the large network of tunnels within the burrow system, and some primarily as soldiers, protecting the group from outside predators. This eusocial organisation social structure, similar to that found in ants, termites, and some bees and wasps, is very rare among mammals. (Well, dammit, what's the other mammal??"
"The Damaraland Mole Rat (Coetomys damarensis) is the only other eusocial mammal currently known." (THANK YOU.)
Verrrrrrrry weird. Verrrrrrry interesting. I'm verrrrry glad these things aren't underground in my back yard!
[Edited to remove a useless bit of repetition]
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I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone* -Dick Cheney
*some restrictions may apply |
| Edited by - Zebra on 03/07/2009 21:15:31 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 03/08/2009 : 11:38:55 [Permalink]
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Oh joy! Naked Mole Rats! My favorite, non-Republican rodent!
Actually Zebra, there is a great advantage to having a colony of Naked Mole Rats under your yard. They are so territoral that it will be the only one you will have to put up with, and their soldier-caste attacks on any invader, be it an optomistic Snake or an outsider Mole Rat are vicious and amusing.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Zebra
Skeptic Friend
USA
354 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2009 : 14:05:35 [Permalink]
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Hmm, yes, but if they were under my backyard that would mean I was living in or near Somalia. Not on my top ten list of places to live right now.
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I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone* -Dick Cheney
*some restrictions may apply |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2009 : 14:41:43 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Zebra
Hmm, yes, but if they were under my backyard that would mean I was living in or near Somalia. Not on my top ten list of places to live right now.
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Hmm, yes. There is that unfortunate disadvantage. And I understand that it is very difficult to get green cards for an entire colony, the Dept. of Immigration being what it is, and steeped in Naked Mole Rat haters. Predjudice rears it's ugly face yet again.
There are, of course several zoos and museums that have quite large colonies, but they are very stingy and refuse to share.
Ah well, it's an imperfect world, isn't it? 
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Zebra
Skeptic Friend
USA
354 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2009 : 16:41:26 [Permalink]
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Now that you mention it, I remember seeing an exhibit labeled "Naked Mole Rats" at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle a few years ago, but the animals weren't in the exhibit at the time. Probably on loan to someone's back yard.
I wonder if they like SPAM?
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I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone* -Dick Cheney
*some restrictions may apply |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
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Naked Mole Rats: Not just Filthy's pals anymore
