Naked Mole Rats May Communicate by Eating Feces(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
Naked Mole Rats May Communicate by Eating Feces
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/naked-mole-rats-eat-poop/568519/?single_page=true
22 comments
In their stomach is a way of transporting the roots/tuber material they forage, back to the hive.
Also we do not begrudge bovines for having multiple stomachs to break down cellulose why begrudge the NMRs for just having one but using multiple times.
Plus they are just amazing creatures, they are not more likely to die when older than when younger (that is huge)
which means they can get old, consider when you have ever heard of a 32 year old hamster.
They are the only mammal which resists cancer (that I know of) zero cases in the wild and only recently a couple of siblings who's colony lived at Disney for the last 50 years were found to have tumors.
They can survive without oxygen for several times longer than other mammals(18 minutes if I recall) they do this by switching from metabolizing glucose to fructose which I am not aware of any other mammal doing.
So what they do in the privacy of their burrows to achieve these incredible results is of no moment when compared to what we can learn from them.
Elephants have strong cancer resistance relative to their size [0]. In general, larger animals have stronger cancer suppression mechanisms (elephants being even more resistant than their size would suggest) which makes sense given that larger animals have more cells, each of which has an independent probability of getting cancer - if they didn't have stronger cancer resistance, they would get cancer very quickly. I think NMRs are interesting because despite being so small they have high resistance to cancer, which is quite unusual.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858328/
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858328/
All: This is a good and on-topic article but dread leads me to a caveat: if you comment, please resist the obvious internet reflexes.
> Naked-mole-rat queens use their hormone-rich poop to govern their subordinates.
> [The Queen's] subordinates take care of the pups, and they never make sex hormones of their own or become sexually mature.
Huh, so I guess the evolutionary strategy is that the Queen can give her subjects just enough hormones to get them excited about motherhood, but too few to become mothers themselves.
Also, what weird timing, "Minute Earth" put out this video 5 hrs ago:
> [The Queen's] subordinates take care of the pups, and they never make sex hormones of their own or become sexually mature.
Huh, so I guess the evolutionary strategy is that the Queen can give her subjects just enough hormones to get them excited about motherhood, but too few to become mothers themselves.
Also, what weird timing, "Minute Earth" put out this video 5 hrs ago:
Why Do Some Animals Eat Poop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubt2fl11v5EFascinating! Though, I'm not sure I would call that "communicating".
Perhaps a more truthful title would have been: "Naked mole rat behavior may be influenced by feeding on hormone-carrying feces of the queen"
But that doesn't have the same appeal, and indeed: I probably wouldn't have clicked the article if it had that less click-baity title.
Perhaps a more truthful title would have been: "Naked mole rat behavior may be influenced by feeding on hormone-carrying feces of the queen"
But that doesn't have the same appeal, and indeed: I probably wouldn't have clicked the article if it had that less click-baity title.
“The whole idea that one organism would voluntarily ingest and be regulated by the fecal by-products of another,” she says, “makes us wonder what is going on.”
You and me both.
Past the squick factor though, it really is an amazing example of how many forms life can take.
You and me both.
Past the squick factor though, it really is an amazing example of how many forms life can take.
I feel like most animals are less disgusted by feces than humans are; I wonder if our aversion yet obsession with poop is socially constructed.
I would suspect it is a function of how dangerous it is to eat the poop. For us it is risky to do so, therefore aversion evolved.
Observe this biological curiosity in action: the Smithsonian naked mole-rat webcam goes live in 24 hours
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/naked-mole-rat
https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/naked-mole-rat
Life is so weird and fascinating.
Isn't this what happens at a cellular level all the time?
Still better than facebook, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, yeah... Pier Paolo Pasolini made a movie about it.
Well, I can chalk this down, as one of the more interesting and disgusting things I've learnt this week.
Eww.
Eww.
New Silicon Valley trend: Bosses demand subordinates eat their feces.
> Well, I read this article that said eating poop makes you a better worker so I thought I'd give it a shot.
> Well, I read this article that said eating poop makes you a better worker so I thought I'd give it a shot.
I find it interesting that even super alturistic communist animals seem to converge to having a nominated leader. It's seems fragile to me but biology is telling us primary elections are a reasonable solution to distributed control.
A lot of animals (including us) have a common ancestor. That animal had dominance hierarchy characteristics. So pecking orders were already in our ancestors well before we even became anything like us.
Naked or hairless? Not too many mole rats where pants.
Naked because hairless, no pants in the evaluation.
More engagingly, it's also called a sand puppy [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat
More engagingly, it's also called a sand puppy [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat