Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know, part of our ongoing Amazing Animals edition. Maybe
Speaker 2: the most robust rhinoceros like suite of all of our sweets.
Speaker 3: Probably that are crime and punishment.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, but I think everybody can get behind you know,
Speaker 2: sloths and elephants and not everybody's like sure.
Speaker 3: Prison right or crime scene clean up?
Speaker 2: Sure? Well that was a tough one. But today we're
Speaker 2: adding to the animal one, and we're adding a good one. Chuck.
Speaker 2: This is a great pick because thank you. We're talking
Speaker 2: about naked mole rats. And they're one of those things
Speaker 2: like narwhals where you're like, I've heard of it. I
Speaker 2: know everybody's into him and everything, But unlike narwals, when
Speaker 2: you do a little investigating into him, naked mule rats
Speaker 2: are ridiculously interesting.
Speaker 3: They are. And I think I mentioned this on an episode,
Speaker 3: but where I got this idea it was long simmering
Speaker 3: because the great Errol Morris documentary Fast, Cheap and out
Speaker 3: of Control, which have you seen it? No, it's a
Speaker 3: great documentary. It's been around for a long time. And
Speaker 3: in that documentary he takes I think three disparate professions
Speaker 3: gentlemen who performed these professions, and also ties it into
Speaker 3: an old lion tamer guy from a circus with like
Speaker 3: footage and telling his story. There's like a robot scientist,
Speaker 3: a topiary gardener, the aforementioned lion tamer from footage, and
Speaker 3: then this guy who is a naked mole rat scientist.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what's his name?
Speaker 3: I don't remember his name. I can picture his face
Speaker 3: and looking at you know. When that documentary was, it
Speaker 3: was pretty early on and kind of what we knew
Speaker 3: about naked mole rat, so he was probably on the
Speaker 3: leading edge, but.
Speaker 2: On the leading edge, not the bleeding edge.
Speaker 3: That's when I first sort of discovered the naked mole
Speaker 3: rat and fell in love with what might be the
Speaker 3: ugliest animal on earth.
Speaker 2: For real, for real. Yeah. I saw somewhere that National
Speaker 2: Geographic described them as bratwurst with teeth.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, and apparently.
Speaker 2: The guy who first described him, Edward Repel, back in
Speaker 2: eighteen forty two. When he described him, other biologists were like, well, clearly, Repel,
Speaker 2: you're dumb, because this has got to be a baby
Speaker 2: of some sort of some other species, or these things
Speaker 2: are diseased. They're not their own thing. And he said, no, really,
Speaker 2: I think they're their own thing. And he turned out
Speaker 2: to be right. But that just goes to show just
Speaker 2: how weird looking they are that even biologists were like,
Speaker 2: what is this thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like any naked animal, and there are a handful.
Speaker 3: Is strange looking to people that are accustomed to mammals
Speaker 3: with fur. Yeah, I should say mammals, but the naked
Speaker 3: mole rat is I mean, boy, this thing is like
Speaker 3: only a mother could love, is the saying. I think
Speaker 3: a face and body for sure.
Speaker 2: They all have the same mother pretty much, I do know.
Speaker 3: Look at you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get into that later. But dropping it in,
Speaker 2: let's talk a little bit about the taxonomic classification of
Speaker 2: naked mole rats, shall we.
Speaker 3: Yeah, uh, take it away, because they used to be
Speaker 3: classified differently, but they finally settled on giving them their
Speaker 3: own little space, now right.
Speaker 2: I don't know that they settled on it. I think
Speaker 2: it's proposed, and not everybody in the naked mole rat
Speaker 2: research community agrees on it. But they are rodents. They're
Speaker 2: in the order Rodentia. They're in the family bath there, Ergide,
Speaker 2: I even practiced. That's so frustrating to have practiced it
Speaker 2: out loud and still miffed it.
Speaker 3: No, I think you got it, Beth Ergide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got it the second time, but it should
Speaker 2: have rolled off my tongue for as much as I
Speaker 2: practiced it.
Speaker 3: That never does.
Speaker 2: So all of the family Bathi Ergiday are are located
Speaker 2: in Sub Saharan Africa. Yeah, and uh, there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of different kinds of mole rats. It's just the naked
Speaker 2: morad is its own thing, and it's so distinct in
Speaker 2: so many different ways that, like you were saying, some
Speaker 2: naked morat scientists are like, there, we just need to
Speaker 2: make their own family because right now they're a separate genus.
Speaker 2: They're their own genus heterocephal Heterocephalida practice that one too,
Speaker 2: But they're so different from the other members of the
Speaker 2: family that they're like, we should not just classify them
Speaker 2: as their own genus and species, We should classify them
Speaker 2: as their own family. This one type of animals should
Speaker 2: be its own family. Not everybody's on.
Speaker 3: Board, Yeah, but I think everyone listening has a family
Speaker 3: member that you know, they think maybe should be classified
Speaker 3: as their own family.
Speaker 2: Always naked buck teeth. Sure that family member rusty uncle Rusty.
Speaker 3: Like you mentioned, the naked mole rats live throughout the
Speaker 3: Horn of Africa, generally in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, and
Speaker 3: they are doing great. There are a lot of them.
Speaker 3: This isn't one of those I feel like most of
Speaker 3: the animals we cover have some sort of threatened designation,
Speaker 3: but they're killing it and they're doing awesome. There's lots
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: One reason why is because the land that they live
Speaker 2: under is so arid that it's not usually disturbed for
Speaker 2: crop land, so they don't get into fights with farmers typically,
Speaker 2: which would be a big problem for them because they
Speaker 2: would eat all the farmers' crops and the farmers would
Speaker 2: kill them all. So because they don't really dwell where
Speaker 2: humans tend to dwell, that's a big mark in their
Speaker 2: favor from what I.
Speaker 3: Saw, totally they I mean, hopefully you've looked up a picture,
Speaker 3: like pulled off to the side of the road or
Speaker 3: something if you're driving, to see a picture of these things,
Speaker 3: so you have an idea of what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: If not, do so, because you might think they look
Speaker 3: like maybe a newborn guinea pig or something. Maybe, I
Speaker 3: mean that's being kind, I guess, and that's the adults. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: But they did diverge from guinea pigs they believe, about
Speaker 3: fifty million years ago, so they're related in a way,
Speaker 3: but they, like you said, they really are their own thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're pretty much not related to moles or rats.
Speaker 2: It's their closest relative as guinea pigs, like you said.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that really makes naked mole
Speaker 2: rats special is that they are fossorial, which is a
Speaker 2: type of animal that lives underground pretty much all the time.
Speaker 2: They don't live underground and it's hot out and then
Speaker 2: come out at night to feed or hunt. They live underground.
Speaker 2: I'm sure plenty of them spend their entire lives underground,
Speaker 2: and their lives are significant in length, as we'll see,
Speaker 2: But that that's a big distinction because there's a lot
Speaker 2: of animals that live underground but spend time above ground too.
Speaker 2: Not naked mole rats.
Speaker 3: No, they love it down there. And as we've covered
Speaker 3: in what was the bios Spieliology episode, I think yeah,
Speaker 3: and we also didn't we also do one on other
Speaker 3: cave dwelling animals or was that that one? I think
Speaker 3: it was that one, all right, either one or two
Speaker 3: of those. But we you know, they have some features
Speaker 3: that other animals who live generally deep underground for a
Speaker 3: lot of their lives have, which is not really useless eyes.
Speaker 3: I mean they have technically they have eyes. They can
Speaker 3: sense bright and dark, but they're basically blind. And they
Speaker 3: don't have ears really either. They have, you know, little
Speaker 3: tiny ear flaps if they have anything at all. They're
Speaker 3: about three to four inches long, except for the queen,
Speaker 3: who can be a bit bigger. Yeah, talk about the
Speaker 3: queen because it's very very interesting. And then they have
Speaker 3: a little short tail, sort of a taper tail, and
Speaker 3: then a little piggy snout. But what's really like when
Speaker 3: you look at a naked mole rat, the first thing
Speaker 3: you're going to notice is they're naked and really wrinkly
Speaker 3: and funny looking. And then those chompers up front.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because their teeth if you look closely, they come
Speaker 2: out of their face, not their mouth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they can close their mouth which they still had
Speaker 3: their teeth out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's an adaptation that they came
Speaker 2: up with where they can use their teeth to dig
Speaker 2: while their mouth is close, so they keep dirt from
Speaker 2: getting in their mouths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing, And you dug up some extra stuff
Speaker 3: which is pretty remarkable about those teeth. And we're going
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about the teeth, probably a
Speaker 3: lot about the teeth, but they basically function as a
Speaker 3: sense organ. Scientists have found that the Sommo man I
Speaker 3: practiced that one too, So mattisensory cortex that's not even
Speaker 3: a hard one, which is involved in the sense of touch,
Speaker 3: is very, very large, and about a third of it
Speaker 3: is dedicated to those incisors. So they actually feel through
Speaker 3: those teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah they yeah, like you said, it's a sense organ.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. They also use them not only to
Speaker 2: sense the world, but also to carry stuff around. They
Speaker 2: can use them like needlenose pliers. They can move them
Speaker 2: independently in all sorts of different weird directions. They I
Speaker 2: don't know of any other animal that has teeth as
Speaker 2: a sense organ. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: No, how about those jaws too.
Speaker 2: So, because their teeth are so important to them, not
Speaker 2: just for eating, but for digging and creating their habitats
Speaker 2: and for defense too, their jaws. I think twenty five
Speaker 2: percent of their entire muscle mass of their body is
Speaker 2: in their jaws, specifically in the jaw muscle, the deep
Speaker 2: massiter muscle. If you make if you put three fingers
Speaker 2: upward on your cheek so that you're kind of making
Speaker 2: that scouts on or thing. Sure, the finger closest to
Speaker 2: you is just touching your ear, the outside of your
Speaker 2: ear or where your ear touches your face.
Speaker 3: I'm doing it.
Speaker 2: And then you start making a chewing sound or chewing motion.
Speaker 2: Do you feel how it's like your cheek is pushing
Speaker 2: out against your fingers.
Speaker 3: Beneath I do.
Speaker 2: That's your mass And then do one other thing. Leave
Speaker 2: your fingers there, don't move, but slide them up a
Speaker 2: little further to your temple, and then do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Do you feel that muscle.
Speaker 3: Moving, Yeah, that's the headache button exactly.
Speaker 2: That's your MASSI muscle as well, So we have them too,
Speaker 2: but only about one percent of our muscle mass is
Speaker 2: invested in our jaws. A quarter of their muscle mass
Speaker 2: is invested in their jaw and specifically in the mass complex.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing, and that makes those teeth. Basically, like
Speaker 3: it's sort of like a shovel chisel combination. They can shovel.
Speaker 3: It is shovel. They have tremendous power. Just Snoop Dogg
Speaker 3: has that train work. So I think we could suit
Speaker 3: for that. Uh and we'll be like, hey, go after
Speaker 3: the naked mole rat. Snoop, I saved those sideburns years ago. Uh.
Speaker 3: So they use them. You know, they're they're scraping, they're
Speaker 3: always digging, they're always carrying dirt. Like you mentioned, they
Speaker 3: can close their little lips because they don't want to
Speaker 3: get dirt in their mouths, and they're always just sort
Speaker 3: of at work digging tunnels. They're like Charles Bronson in
Speaker 3: The Great.
Speaker 2: Escape, right pretty much that's who they've modeled their entire
Speaker 2: society on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they do this in a little like an
Speaker 3: assembly line.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They will gnaw into the earth and they will pass
Speaker 3: dirt back, and eventually that dirt forms what else, a
Speaker 3: mole hill.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw those kind of like a conveyor belt.
Speaker 2: So there's one mole or one naked mole rat at
Speaker 2: the front doing all the digging, and there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of mole rats following them that are sweeping like a
Speaker 2: specific pile out and as they're sweeping it further and
Speaker 2: further back, and as they're moving backward, they finally get
Speaker 2: to the end, and then there's a larger mole rat
Speaker 2: there's kicking it outside, forming that molehill you were talking about.
Speaker 2: And then when the when the mole rat that's been
Speaker 2: sweeping it to the guy who's kicking it out of
Speaker 2: the tunnel, they climb back over the people in front
Speaker 2: of them and go to the front of the line again.
Speaker 2: So it is it's like this conveyor belt that's just tunneling,
Speaker 2: like boring through the earth. And this is really hard
Speaker 2: packed dry dirt too. It's not easy stuff to chew through.
Speaker 3: No, they make easier work out of it when things
Speaker 3: are a little wetter, but generally this dirt is fairly dry,
Speaker 3: like you said, so it's pretty tough. And we mentioned
Speaker 3: that they're a hairless. They do have some tiny, tiny
Speaker 3: little hairs here and there. They have some sensory hairs
Speaker 3: on their faces and tails, and a little bit of
Speaker 3: hair between their toes, so they can sweep away that
Speaker 3: dirt like you were talking about. But if you look
Speaker 3: at a naked mole rat. I mean, the first thing
Speaker 3: that you're gonna say is that things naked, and look
Speaker 3: at those teeth, and I imagine a large one would
Speaker 3: be terrifying because they're pretty small, like we said, just
Speaker 3: a few inches.
Speaker 2: Yes, did you watch the Smithsonian Naked mole Rat.
Speaker 3: Camsh No, but there's so much of that in fast,
Speaker 3: cheap and out of control. Okay, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I hadn't.
Speaker 2: I had not seen them before, and they are really cute.
Speaker 2: They're so studious and so serious about the digging around
Speaker 2: and moving around.
Speaker 3: That they're doing very hard.
Speaker 2: Pushing this thing over there, and they just they're super
Speaker 2: cute when you watch them. Apparently they're not very aggressive.
Speaker 2: There's only specific instances where they show aggression, but for
Speaker 2: the most part, they're pretty peaceful, even though to us
Speaker 2: they would seem pretty rude because they climb over one another,
Speaker 2: in part because they are very closely related, so you
Speaker 2: know they're fine with that, but also because their habitats
Speaker 2: are enormous, but they still live on top of each other.
Speaker 2: Like a naked mole rat. Tunnel system can be comprised
Speaker 2: of miles of tunnel that's spread out over like five
Speaker 2: acres of land, and yet when they're when they live together,
Speaker 2: they live in a really tight, close knit community that
Speaker 2: they literally crawl on top of each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they crawl all over each other like it's nothing
Speaker 3: like they're crawling over like a rock or something. And
Speaker 3: they are just as good at going backwards as forwards.
Speaker 3: And when we say that, like we mean it. They
Speaker 3: they've they've done little races and they found that naked
Speaker 3: mole rats can go backwards just as fast as they
Speaker 3: can go forwards and are just as coordinated, which isn't
Speaker 3: super coordinated, but we're talking naked mole rats here. That's
Speaker 3: in a smallish tunnel.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm pretty stimulated, Chuck. Do you want to take
Speaker 2: a break.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's take a break. Since you're stimulated.
Speaker 2: I got a d stem stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know, the stuff you should I should know.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty distimmed.
Speaker 3: I'm feeling all right now you're feeling good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm gonna get stimulated again, Chuck, because there's
Speaker 2: so much more, Like we haven't even really tapped into
Speaker 2: the most amazing stuff about naked mole rats, Like oh,
Speaker 2: this is still this is neat, this is interesting, but
Speaker 2: just wait, everybody just you.
Speaker 3: Wait, should we talk about respiration?
Speaker 2: I think we should.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the deal. They are underground in these very
Speaker 3: tight spaces and down there because there are so many
Speaker 3: naked mole rats. I don't think we said, but they
Speaker 3: live in colonies, and we'll get to the social structure
Speaker 3: because it's very very interesting among mammals for sure, and
Speaker 3: especially among rodents. But you know, seventy to two hundred
Speaker 3: to three hundred naked mole rats living together in these
Speaker 3: tightish quarters even though it's spread out. You know, they're
Speaker 3: small tunnels because they're small animals and there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of oxygen down there. They can get by on
Speaker 3: a startlingly low amount of oxygen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in an environment that's also high in carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: Like you or I would suffocate to death in a
Speaker 2: naked mole rat tunnel system.
Speaker 3: Any animal would, I think, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because they've become adapted to
Speaker 2: that kind of environment, a low oxygen, high carbon dioxide environment.
Speaker 2: And the way that they've adapted is they have they
Speaker 2: have evolved a system that, aside from naked mole rats,
Speaker 2: has only been found in plants.
Speaker 3: That's right, So oh, I don't keep going.
Speaker 2: So the toast pump. We all have fructose pumps, but
Speaker 2: ours are all in our guts. The naked mole rats
Speaker 2: have a fructose pump that uses a metabolic pathway that
Speaker 2: takes fructose to be burned for energy in their brains.
Speaker 2: And the reason fructose is so important is because it
Speaker 2: can be burned anaerobically. You don't need oxygen to power
Speaker 2: that system of energy creation or unlocking energy. I guess
Speaker 2: from the fruit toase you can just do it without oxygen.
Speaker 2: So they lower their metabolism enough that they don't need
Speaker 2: much much oxygen. They can get by on the burning
Speaker 2: fruit toase until there's more oxygen available. Again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it can live in an atmosphere that is twenty
Speaker 3: percent oxygen and eighty percent CO two, and they've been
Speaker 3: able to survive for at least five hours with as
Speaker 3: little as five percent oxygen. Five percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you couldn't do that. I think twenty percent is
Speaker 2: like the andes. Five percent is not much at all. No,
Speaker 2: So there's another thing I said that they were generally peaceful.
Speaker 2: They're generally peaceful within the colony. Apparently there's a behavior
Speaker 2: that queens have where they show up and just start
Speaker 2: shoving workers around. Did you see that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And they're not quite sure aggressive at times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's mostly just the queen and she's mostly
Speaker 2: shoving workers. They thought maybe they were it was because
Speaker 2: they were being lazy, but the worker is much more
Speaker 2: likely to be shoved while they're working, which just seems obnoxious.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just a little reminder. Yeah, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2: But other than that, they aren't very aggressive unless you're
Speaker 2: a naked molerat from another colony. And from what I saw,
Speaker 2: if you stumble into a naked morat colony and you're
Speaker 2: an outsider, they will kill you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not pretty. If you're a predator as well,
Speaker 3: they will band together and stack on one another and
Speaker 3: reveal those teeth if a centipede or a snake or
Speaker 3: something comes down there. And U yeah, and like you said,
Speaker 3: if you're not a member of the family, and I
Speaker 3: guess we should go ahead and say it like they're
Speaker 3: all the same family, right. Isn't there a lot of
Speaker 3: insects going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about their incests, shall we. Sure, so
Speaker 2: they inbreed. The reason why is because they have one
Speaker 2: queen that's just part of their hierarchy, their social structure,
Speaker 2: and the Queen has a very limited number of people
Speaker 2: the breed with. She basically says you, you, and you
Speaker 2: you're my breeding males. Everybody else not only like, don't
Speaker 2: breed with the queen. Somehow, mysteriously, the Queen keeps worker
Speaker 2: males and worker females from even like maturing sexually. Yes,
Speaker 2: they have no idea how this is happening. Because if
Speaker 2: you take a non breeding worker male in a non
Speaker 2: breeding worker female out of their colony, within days they
Speaker 2: develop like adult mature reproductive systems and can reproduce. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like something going on.
Speaker 3: A male literally will they have tiny kind of buried testicles,
Speaker 3: But five days after they're out of that hole, those
Speaker 3: testicles literally grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you should see that on fast motion. It's really funny.
Speaker 3: Please tell me that's not existent.
Speaker 2: Oh but there's a gift out there somewhere. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's it's weird. It's the suppression of reproduce ability,
Speaker 3: and it's it's the Queen. It's just the Queen and
Speaker 3: all the other males have their hands up. And only
Speaker 3: if you get to go in there and take care
Speaker 3: of business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so very frequently they're her own offspring. That's just
Speaker 2: how it goes. For a couple of reasons. One, she
Speaker 2: makes so many she has so many litters over her lifetime.
Speaker 2: And then also they are there. They are very long lived.
Speaker 2: I think in captivity they live up to thirty years
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 3: I saw longer too. I saw one that was like
Speaker 3: close to forty.
Speaker 2: So we've only been studying them in captivity for about
Speaker 2: forty ish years, maybe fifty, so we don't really know
Speaker 2: what they're actual Like the upper limit of their lifespan is.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that later. But a mouse, if it's lucky,
Speaker 2: lives five years in captivity. These guys are living thirty
Speaker 2: forty years, right, that's old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw the Queen's not in captivity. Can it's
Speaker 3: usually like eighteen to twenty years okay, underground, which is
Speaker 3: still remarkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's super remarkable. So during that time, because she's
Speaker 2: creating so many letters and there's outsiders who come to
Speaker 2: the colony get killed, she has to. It's inevitable she's
Speaker 2: reproducing with her own kin. And so they found genetically, Chuck,
Speaker 2: that the average genetic similarity between just any two members
Speaker 2: of a colony is about point five in human terms.
Speaker 2: Point five is what and their offspring has. These are
Speaker 2: just brothers and sisters have zero point five similarity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think between the queen and her offspring, it's like
Speaker 2: point eight, and you're like, what is all this getting
Speaker 2: at the highest number you can get to is one
Speaker 2: point zero, and that's for identical twins that came from
Speaker 2: the same egg. They're almost genetically perfectly identical. And the
Speaker 2: queen and her offspring are like at point eight. So
Speaker 2: they are super duper imbread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're I mean, it's only them down there. What
Speaker 3: happens underground stays underground, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: So the other cool thing or another cool thing about
Speaker 3: them living underground is that they're basically cold blooded. I
Speaker 3: think scientifically technically they're probably not, but effectively they are
Speaker 3: cold blooded mammals because they don't have self regulating body temperature.
Speaker 3: They regulate their body temperature in a few ways, but
Speaker 3: they basically call it behavioral regulation thermoregulation. They will work
Speaker 3: harder sometimes to get there, you know, to get the
Speaker 3: heat going. They will stack themselves on one another when
Speaker 3: it's colder and they will go higher in the tunnel system,
Speaker 3: closer to the surface to feel that sun's heat, but
Speaker 3: still not go outside to warm up. When it's colder,
Speaker 3: they will, I'm sorry, when it's warmer, they will go
Speaker 3: deeper and have more space in between them and stuff
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: And yet despite all that, despite not being able to
Speaker 2: regulate their own temperature, they still maintain about in the
Speaker 2: eighties fahrenheit. That's how warm it is in a naked
Speaker 2: mole rat tunnel system, and the humidity is like fifty
Speaker 2: to sixty percent. It's balmy.
Speaker 3: It's balmy. It's warm, and it's not balmy because it's
Speaker 3: full of water. Because get this, I know you know this.
Speaker 3: I'm talking to the people in podcast land. I know
Speaker 3: they don't drink water. They don't say like they try
Speaker 3: to seal off those tunnels. You know, it's not probably
Speaker 3: not possible to completely seal them off, but they would
Speaker 3: flood very easily if they didn't do as good a
Speaker 3: job as they do already. Sure, but it's not like
Speaker 3: they dig little water wells and let them fill up
Speaker 3: and go lap it up. You know, through those teeth.
Speaker 3: They don't drink water. They get water from what they eat.
Speaker 3: We said they didn't go out to find food and stuff.
Speaker 3: So you're wondering, like, what are they eating, like little
Speaker 3: insects is stumble in there? No, No, they are eating
Speaker 3: roots and bulbs and rhizomes and you know tubers, like
Speaker 3: basically what part of the plant is underground. They're eating
Speaker 3: that stuff and that's also where they're getting every bit
Speaker 3: of water they need.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Again, like they live in the desert,
Speaker 2: so this is where desert plants store their waters in
Speaker 2: like big tubers and bulbs. And typically when a naked
Speaker 2: mole rat goes out and stumbles into a tuber, they'll
Speaker 2: start bringing it back to the rest of the colony.
Speaker 2: Very very good like that. They really look out for
Speaker 2: one another. But once in a while they'll find a
Speaker 2: tuber that's like fifty pounds. It's just huge, and they're
Speaker 2: no naked mole rat could do anything with that, So
Speaker 2: they eat it in situ, and they do it in
Speaker 2: such a way that when they'll bore a hole into
Speaker 2: this giant tuber, eat the inside flesh and then come
Speaker 2: back out and they'll plug the hole with dirt and
Speaker 2: then they'll let the tuber like regenerate, let the plant
Speaker 2: like regrow, and then they'll go back and do it
Speaker 2: again once the plant's healthy again.
Speaker 3: In that neat, it's amazing. And they're not doing this
Speaker 3: in any kind of I don't think we mentioned like
Speaker 3: their their sleep cycles. They're not. They work together like
Speaker 3: very very well. And we'll talk about that structure more
Speaker 3: in a minute. But it's not like they get up
Speaker 3: in the morning. They don't know what morning is. They're underground. Yeah, so,
Speaker 3: as far as anyone can tell, they don't have any
Speaker 3: kind of regular sleep cycle going on. They just they
Speaker 3: work when they're supposed to work, and they work till
Speaker 3: they get tired and then they sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no morning under ground, isn't the grim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's a that's a song title of some
Speaker 3: sort of death metal band. Probably.
Speaker 2: I think you could make it the the titular song
Speaker 2: title for the album.
Speaker 3: The Naked Mole Rats. Sure, that's it. That's the name
Speaker 3: of the man.
Speaker 2: I guess No, I mean, like, there is no Morning
Speaker 2: Underground is the name of the first single and the album.
Speaker 3: And the album, and then in parentheses it says like
Speaker 3: believe me or something like that. Sure, uh, or can
Speaker 3: we talk I mean, we talked about what they eat,
Speaker 3: but we should also talk about the other thing they
Speaker 3: sometimes eat.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of excited about this.
Speaker 3: Take it away.
Speaker 2: Then they eat poop.
Speaker 3: They eat their own poop.
Speaker 2: They eat their own poop, they eat others poop. Apparently
Speaker 2: the adults of the colony will poop directly into the
Speaker 2: mouths of the pups when they need it, when they
Speaker 2: want it. And this all sounds gross, and it is.
Speaker 2: I think even other types of mole rats are like,
Speaker 2: good God, have you seen what our cousins do when
Speaker 2: we're not around. But there's a good reason for this.
Speaker 2: This is actually a big strategy. They have a gut
Speaker 2: to digest these really hard tubers. This is not the
Speaker 2: kind of like root vegetables you would get at a
Speaker 2: grocery store. This is wild sub Saharan Africa tubers that
Speaker 2: they're eating and trying to digest, and they can't possibly
Speaker 2: digest it all the first time, so when they poop,
Speaker 2: it's still chuck full of food, so they don't waste it.
Speaker 2: They just eat the.
Speaker 3: Poop, that's right. And they have a hind gut because
Speaker 3: you know, herbivores often have things inside their body that
Speaker 3: are going to help them digest this really vibrus plant matter,
Speaker 3: and they do have a hind gut that is really
Speaker 3: good for that, but it's still not good enough. And
Speaker 3: so like you said, they eat, they poop, they eat
Speaker 3: it again, and that pretty much takes care of it.
Speaker 2: There's one other really cool thing about it, too.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: There's two other cool things about eating poop. One, when
Speaker 2: the adults poop into the pup's mouths, they're not just
Speaker 2: feeding them, they're also transferfing gut microbiota, which will help
Speaker 2: them protect them from disease, will help them digest stuff
Speaker 2: even better. It's pretty neat. And then they also think
Speaker 2: we talked about suppressing the reproductiveness of the others, like
Speaker 2: the other females, the Queen can somehow repress them. They
Speaker 2: don't know how she's doing that, but they do think
Speaker 2: that the reason why other non worker females help raise
Speaker 2: pops with no incentive whatsoever and with no reproductive organs
Speaker 2: or hormones is that when they eat the queen's poop,
Speaker 2: she passes just enough estrogen to them to make them
Speaker 2: want to take care of the pipes.
Speaker 3: That is astounding, it is. And there's one more part
Speaker 3: to the poop. We mentioned, if you come in and
Speaker 3: you're from another colony, you're in big trouble. They also
Speaker 3: think that feeding the poop and also occasionally rolling in
Speaker 3: the poop is a way that they can impart like
Speaker 3: a colony smell that everyone's gonna have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so everybody will smell the same. So if somebody
Speaker 2: shows up, you're like, you're not terry, and then they're
Speaker 2: dead right, because they can tell from your smell because
Speaker 2: their sense of smell is just ridiculously acute. That's basically
Speaker 2: what they have. Smell, touch, and then hearing somehow because
Speaker 2: they make more vocalizations than any other rodent on the planet,
Speaker 2: and yet they basically don't have ears, So I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how they do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we can talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 3: They have the queen has a toilet song when she
Speaker 3: goes poo poo in her toilet chamber. And I guess
Speaker 3: we should also say that they have different chambers for
Speaker 3: different things. They have bathrooms and they have bedrooms. They
Speaker 3: have these sort of expressway super highways that are a
Speaker 3: little larger where they're just crawling all over each other
Speaker 3: back and forth, but they have different rooms and one
Speaker 3: of them is a bathroom and she sings a little
Speaker 3: toilet song when she goes, and they think that might
Speaker 3: be like, hey, I just pooped. Is anyone going to
Speaker 3: come in here and eat this? Or'm not gonna have
Speaker 3: to throw it at you. She also says, hey, you
Speaker 3: three that I picked out earlier, I'm ready to have
Speaker 3: intercourse with you. So here here's my song for that.
Speaker 3: We mentioned those predators there sounds for predator invasions.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then you know, and this might lead us into
Speaker 3: talking about the social structure, maybe after a break. But
Speaker 3: they do have little chirps that will signal their social order,
Speaker 3: which is still not quite figured out. But maybe we'll
Speaker 3: take a break there and talk about that.
Speaker 2: Let's do it, all right, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Stop. You should know.
Speaker 3: So we mentioned early on that they are a part
Speaker 3: of the Bathier GID Is that right, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: Bathier GID group. And they are generally pretty solitary there.
Speaker 3: They may live with a few others here and there,
Speaker 3: but they don't do what naked mole rats do, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, colonies that can get up into the hundreds.
Speaker 3: They are the closest thing that you can compare a
Speaker 3: naked mole rat to is like an ant colony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or bees, like they're like, you find you sociality.
Speaker 2: They're you social, I think you said before, you find
Speaker 2: that in the insect world, not in the mammal world.
Speaker 2: Apparently there's only other one kind of mole rat that
Speaker 2: has you social hierarchy. But theirs is even like it's
Speaker 2: just nothing compared to the rigidity of the naked mole rats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you social means it is like you said,
Speaker 3: it is rigid. It is very defined. Uh, but they
Speaker 3: don't fully understand that structure and full they have some
Speaker 3: little clues. I think some of the males vary in
Speaker 3: size a little bit, and I think they think that
Speaker 3: the ones that are a little bigger, maybe higher up
Speaker 3: on the you know, social structure. They most of them
Speaker 3: are workers, but some of them, it seems, are specifically soldiers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: kind of are on the front lines when that scorpion
Speaker 3: comes down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a division of labor. What else, Well,
Speaker 2: I've got so there. So the fact that they're you
Speaker 2: social is not intuitive because no one knew that there
Speaker 2: were such a thing as mammals that were you social.
Speaker 2: And I found out that they've only known that these
Speaker 2: things were you social for since like the eighties or nineties,
Speaker 2: and the way that they found out was really astounding
Speaker 2: because some of these early naked morat researchers were like,
Speaker 2: where are why aren't these these morats pregnant? Like I
Speaker 2: have not seen a pregnant female because they didn't know
Speaker 2: that it's just the queen that's creating the litters, right.
Speaker 2: And there was a biologist named Richard Alexander who described
Speaker 2: a hypothetical you social mammal species, and somebody who was
Speaker 2: a researcher named Jennifer Jarvis, who is a naked mole
Speaker 2: rat researcher, was like, buddy, you just described naked mole rats,
Speaker 2: and I think you just solved this puzzle, this mystery
Speaker 2: that there are actually a you social mammal species. And
Speaker 2: that's how we figured it out, just totally by chance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, we mentioned the queen a few times.
Speaker 3: The queen is obviously at the top of that you
Speaker 3: social structure, and much like bees that we've talked about
Speaker 3: a lot, that queen runs the show. There is almost
Speaker 3: always only one queen. I think in rare cases there
Speaker 3: can be a couple of queens. But when it's time
Speaker 3: for a new queen to take the crown, there's a
Speaker 3: big fight. The females sometimes will kill each other to
Speaker 3: become queen. Oh yeah, but it's a violent affair to
Speaker 3: become queen, and they think that this is one of
Speaker 3: the reasons, one of a few reasons why the queen
Speaker 3: ends up larger is because you may start out a
Speaker 3: little larger if you're the one defeating the other females.
Speaker 3: And then this is another remarkable naked mole rat fact.
Speaker 3: Once you become queen, your body literally gets longer, your
Speaker 3: spine linkedins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I saw a picture I think ed added
Speaker 2: it in this article. Any of like the first litter queen,
Speaker 2: you know, five litter queen, ten litter queen, and that
Speaker 2: like I think the ten litter queen her spine is
Speaker 2: about at least one and a half times the length
Speaker 2: of what it would have been during her first litter.
Speaker 2: That's how significantly their body changes so that they can
Speaker 2: have larger and larger litters over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's remarkable. And how many so they can
Speaker 3: have up to like ten litters total throughout their life.
Speaker 2: I think it can get even even larger than that
Speaker 2: I've seen, and I think that the number of pups
Speaker 2: in the litter the record is twenty seven.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're having a lot, and they can have
Speaker 2: tons of litters over their lifetime and then as many
Speaker 2: as you know, twenty seven in a single litter. They're
Speaker 2: really reproducing. There's a lot of pressure on them to produce,
Speaker 2: you know what I.
Speaker 3: Mean, Oh totally. You know, we mentioned that they almost
Speaker 3: never never go outside of the cave system and the
Speaker 3: tunnel system. The very few times that they've seen it
Speaker 3: happen is like they call it, like a mini migration
Speaker 3: where they will see one maybe try to go to
Speaker 3: a different colony. I don't know if they figured out
Speaker 3: why they would leave their colony, but periodically that will happen,
Speaker 3: and they will travel at night of course, because if
Speaker 3: they went out in the sun in the desert during
Speaker 3: the day, they would probably fry like little sausages with teeth,
Speaker 3: Like you said, for.
Speaker 2: Sure brought worst. So they also think that one of
Speaker 2: the main reasons that they would ever leave the colony
Speaker 2: and go up top is to form a new colony,
Speaker 2: kind of like a peaceful I guess, a peaceful coup.
Speaker 2: A bloodless coup that actually leaves the existing queen in place,
Speaker 2: because you know bees do that when they swarm. That's
Speaker 2: a bunch of bees in a colony that's gotten overcrowded,
Speaker 2: going and forming their own colony. Apparently, as you social mammals,
Speaker 2: that's what naked mole rats do as well. Sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's pretty interesting, and I guess we should
Speaker 3: talk about. The final remarkable fact about naked molerats is
Speaker 3: that they don't age in the sense that we think
Speaker 3: about aging. Right, they get older on the calendar, but
Speaker 3: they have shown a remarkable lack of like their body
Speaker 3: and their organs and like their tissue and stuff like
Speaker 3: that showing signs of traditional aging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I mean they get up to thirty, like
Speaker 2: six times the average age of a mouse or the
Speaker 2: far end age of a mouse, and they're just not aging,
Speaker 2: no inflammation, Their bones don't deteriorate. They just are ageless.
Speaker 2: And people researchers who started to notice this are like,
Speaker 2: what is going on? And they have kind of zeroed
Speaker 2: in on one particular molecule called the high A lurinon
Speaker 2: And you might be familiar with higher luronic acid, which
Speaker 2: people love to put in like their facial moisturizers and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, because it's found in skin, well, it's
Speaker 2: also found in naked mole rat skin and it's found
Speaker 2: in aces. They have ten times the amount that humans do,
Speaker 2: and the molecules of high A luranon that they do
Speaker 2: have are like five times larger in size.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they have more, bigger, high alurn molecules and
Speaker 3: they think that it's possible because they're very resistant to
Speaker 3: They found out at first they were very resistant to
Speaker 3: tumors in cancer, and so they're like in the naked
Speaker 3: mole rat does the is that the secret to curing cancer?
Speaker 3: And I don't think that anyone is like saying that
Speaker 3: they're right around the corner from figuring that out. But
Speaker 3: they have gotten this high allurn and they have put
Speaker 3: it in mice and that they because mice are very
Speaker 3: cancer prone, which is one reason we study mice when
Speaker 3: we study cancer. But they have found that these mice
Speaker 3: do much better and they live longer, and they it's
Speaker 3: almost like an immediate shot of youth when they get
Speaker 3: this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When they transfer the high alert and on synthase
Speaker 2: two gene into mice, they really benefit from it. And
Speaker 2: then on the cancer front, when they when they suppress
Speaker 2: the tumor suppressing genes that are found in mammals, in
Speaker 2: the naked mole rats, they still don't get tumors, but
Speaker 2: when they suppress the gene that expresses high alurinon, they
Speaker 2: start to get tumors. So they've pretty much zeroed in
Speaker 2: on high alurinon as some sort of an anti tumor agent.
Speaker 2: And it's a gooey sugar and they've shown that when
Speaker 2: you remove it from a petri dish of naked molerat cells,
Speaker 2: the cells will goop together, but they won't stick together
Speaker 2: as long as there's high alurinon in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's in it's in there. Like you said,
Speaker 3: they're connected tissues. So it's one of the reasons they
Speaker 3: have that loose, kind of stretchy, weird looking skin is
Speaker 3: because of this high lurinon And we went over we
Speaker 3: drove right by. One of the facts that you duck
Speaker 3: up this pretty amazing is that in their is it
Speaker 3: their body can move inside their skin without their skin.
Speaker 2: Moving, they can turn about halfway around within their skin.
Speaker 3: It's that loose, so like they could be doing that
Speaker 3: in front of your face, and you would not know
Speaker 3: it because their skin is just static.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd be like, wow, why is their head over
Speaker 2: there all of a sudden righter still will seem to
Speaker 2: be facing forward, doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that skin comes in handy when they're calling
Speaker 3: around those tunnels and slipping by each other and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. I mean, there are reasons why their skin
Speaker 3: is like that, and it's just remarkable these old guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they think that the anti aging, anti tumor
Speaker 2: traits that they've developed over time are just a byproduct
Speaker 2: of the actual adaptation, which is super loose skin that's
Speaker 2: created by cells that aren't allowed to stick together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And they've also found out that they don't experience
Speaker 3: pain like other mammals do, and you would, of course
Speaker 3: the first thing you think of is like, pain is
Speaker 3: a good thing, because that tells you when you've got
Speaker 3: your hand on a hot stove or what have you.
Speaker 2: That's not the first thing I think of. It's not, no,
Speaker 2: I think of that's great.
Speaker 3: I don't like pain, oh sure, but it's a you know,
Speaker 3: we have to have pain so we know when we're
Speaker 3: experiencing something that could kill us. Granted, but they have
Speaker 3: just enough of a pain receptor to like keep them
Speaker 3: from dying stupidly, but not enough to actually feel pain.
Speaker 3: And I saw this one fact, I guess from an
Speaker 3: experiment that means like somebody actually did this. They said
Speaker 3: that their skin doesn't respond to pain when you put
Speaker 3: acid or cap sasan like what they put in like pepper,
Speaker 3: you know, hot pepper stuff like in pepper spray, that's
Speaker 3: cap season, and their skin doesn't react when you put
Speaker 3: that stuff on their skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or they don't even if their skin's showing signs
Speaker 2: of burning. They're just like what, I didn't hear it.
Speaker 3: No, their skin literally doesn't respond to ask.
Speaker 2: Oh so the skin itself doesn't. The skin itself doesn't, Okay,
Speaker 2: But I get the impression also that if you like
Speaker 2: hurt one. I hate to even talk about this, but
Speaker 2: if you hurt one, it wouldn't even notice it because
Speaker 2: it's pain threshold is so high. And the reason they
Speaker 2: think that this is the case is because their metabolism
Speaker 2: is so fragile, a on such like a razor's edge,
Speaker 2: that they think that their nervous system evolved to, like
Speaker 2: you said, just give them enough pain signals to get by,
Speaker 2: but not enough to really require a lot of extra energy.
Speaker 2: They don't need that kind of sensation to survive.
Speaker 3: Does that mean in some lab somewhere they draw straws
Speaker 3: to see who has to thump the naked mole rat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll bet that's a bummer day for you at
Speaker 2: the office, would be for me.
Speaker 3: I think that's all the amazing facts. I'm looking over
Speaker 3: my notes. I don't think there's anything else, is there?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. The only thing I would say
Speaker 2: is go to the Smithsonian Naked mole rat camps as
Speaker 2: soon as you can. They're very cute to watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and watch fast, cheap and out of control. It's
Speaker 3: a great documentary because he somehow managed manages to Errol
Speaker 3: Morris does to tie each of these professions into a theme,
Speaker 3: a common theme. It's really interesting And if you think
Speaker 3: about it, it's robots that this guy's making that look
Speaker 3: like insects. It's plants that a guy is shaping to
Speaker 3: look like animals.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, are you spoiling it right now?
Speaker 3: No, okay, these are just the jobs they have. The
Speaker 3: naked mole rat guy. I'm trying to figure out how
Speaker 3: that figured him that way. I can't remember, it's been
Speaker 3: a while, but anyway, this guy's enthusiasm the scientists that
Speaker 3: they found just just very contagious of how much he
Speaker 3: loves hiss naked mole rat.
Speaker 2: I could see it. I mean, you could do a
Speaker 2: lot worse to pin your career to that animal as
Speaker 2: a biologist. Like they are just coming up with some
Speaker 2: amazing stuff.
Speaker 3: Greed.
Speaker 2: So since I mentioned amazing stuff and Chuck said agreed,
Speaker 2: that means everybody, it's time for listener.
Speaker 3: Now that's right. But I'm going to shout out that
Speaker 3: naked mole rat guy. His name is Ray Mendez and
Speaker 3: he's pretty amazing nice all right, So I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 3: Let me see, I'm gonna open up the folder.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, mail you guys, you don't know what this means.
Speaker 2: When Chuck opens up the folder, it gets real.
Speaker 3: Uh oh boy, that's an old one. I'm going to
Speaker 3: read that one that might be out of date. I'll read, Oh, okay,
Speaker 3: this is fairly recent. Hoya. I remember we talked about
Speaker 3: the Georgetown Hoyas and were like, what the heck is
Speaker 3: a hooya? We heard from a few Hoyas and this
Speaker 3: was from Mark Mayer or Mark Meyer. Excuse me, Hey guys,
Speaker 3: first time writer, a longtime listener, graduate of Georgetown, You
Speaker 3: and I actually have some knowledge to give back. Your
Speaker 3: answer to the question, was a hoya is? Exactly? Let
Speaker 3: me explain. What I was taught was that Georgetown's nickname
Speaker 3: came from the stone walls, named after the university's beautiful
Speaker 3: walls or the football team's defense, depending on who you ask, okay,
Speaker 3: defense the good Jesuits that we are our cheer was
Speaker 3: the Latin translation of what rocks hoya saksa, and that
Speaker 3: was eventually shortened to hoya's the mascot change, but the
Speaker 3: nickname stuck. So if a Georgetown if you ask a
Speaker 3: Georgetown student what a hoya is, the standard tongue in
Speaker 3: cheek response is something like correct or exactly what is
Speaker 3: a hooya? Because the word hoya literally translates to what
Speaker 3: what is hoya?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 3: How I should have read it?
Speaker 2: And now I understand why people don't like Georgetown graduates.
Speaker 2: I never knew, but now I do.
Speaker 3: Mark says, this is some nineteenth century who's on first
Speaker 3: type of fun. I hope this helps. Thanks for the
Speaker 3: quality entertainment that has gotten me through countless Moe's drives
Speaker 3: and runs. I guess mowing lawn. Sure, all right, that's
Speaker 3: for Mark Meyer.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Mark, that was great knowledge you imparted.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I can't wait till somebody asks
Speaker 2: me what's a hoya? Can't wait?
Speaker 3: Say exactly?
Speaker 2: We can't wait. And if you want to be like
Speaker 2: Mark and send us some info that we didn't know,
Speaker 2: you can put it in an email and send it
Speaker 2: off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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