Stuff You Should Know - Naked Mole Rats: A Face Only a Mother Could Love

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Naked mole rats are funny looking to be sure, but neither moles nor rats. So what are they? You'll have to tune in to find out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. ["I Heart Radio"] Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know, part of our ongoing, amazing animals edition.

Maybe the most robust, rhinoceros-like suite No, part of our ongoing, amazing animals edition. Maybe the most robust rhinoceros like sweet of all of our sweets. Probably, that are crime and punishment. Sure, sure. But I think everybody can get behind sloths and elephants, and not everybody's like, sure, prison. Right, or crime scene cleanup. Sure, well that was a tough one.

But today we're adding to the animal one and we're adding a good one check. This is a great pick because thank you. We're talking about naked mole rats and they're one of those things like narwhals where you're like, I've heard of it, I know everybody's into them and everything. But like narwhals, where you're like, I've heard of it, I know everybody's into them and everything. But unlike narwhals, when you do a little investigating

into them, Nika Morretts are ridiculously interesting. They are. And I think I mentioned this on an episode, but where I got this idea, it was long simmering because the great Errol Mor's documentary, Fast Cheap and Out of Control, which have you seen it? No. It's a great documentary.

It's been around for a long time, and in that documentary, he takes, I think, three disparate professions, gentlemen who perform these professions, and also ties it into an old lion tamer guy from a circus with like footage and telling his story. There's like a robot scientist, a topiary gardener, the aforementioned lion tamer from footage, and then this guy who is a naked mole rat scientist. Oh yeah, what's his name? I don't remember his name. I can picture his face and looking at, you know, when that documentary was, it was pretty early on and kind of what we

knew about naked mole rats. He was probably on the leading edge, but that's what... On the leading edge? No, not the leading edge. That's when I first sort of discovered the naked mole rat and fell in love with what might be the ugliest animal on earth. For real. Yeah, it's also somewhere that National Geographic described them as bratwurst with teeth. Oh man. And apparently the guy who first described them Edward Ruppell back in 1842 when he described them other biologists were like, well, clearly Ruppell back in 1842 when he described them other biologists were like well clearly Ruppell your dumb because this has got to be a baby of some sort of some other species or these things are diseased they're not their own thing and he said no really I think they're

their own thing and he turned out to be right but that just goes to show just how weird looking they are that even biologists were like, what is this thing? Yeah. Any naked animal, and they're a handful, is strange looking to people that are accustomed to mammals with fur. Yeah. I should say mammals. But the naked mole rat is, I mean, boy, this thing is like only a mother could love is the saying, I think, a face and body.

For sure. They all have the same mother pretty much. Oh, no. Look at you. Yeah, we'll get into that later. But drop in it. Let's talk a little bit about the taxonomic classification of naked mole rat, shall we? Yeah. Take it away. Because they used to be classified differently,

but they finally settled on giving them their own little space now, right? I don't know that they settled on it. I think it's proposed and not everybody in the naked mole rat research community agrees on it, but they are rodents, they're in the order of Odentia, they're in the family bathier, bathier Gide. I even practiced that.

That's so frustrating to have practiced it. It's a foul. Out loud and still miffed it. No, I think you got it, bathier gide. Yeah, I got it the second time, but it should have rolled off my tongue for as much as I practiced it. That never does. So, all of the family bathier gide are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. And there's a bunch of

different kinds of mole rats. It's just the naked mole rat is its own thing and it's so distinct in so many different ways that like you were saying some naked mole rat scientists are like they're we just need to make their own family because right now they're a separate genus. They're their own genus, heterosuffel, heterosuffel, Lee-Dae. Practice that one too. But they're so different from the other members of the family that they're like,

we should not just classify them as their own genus and species, we should classify them as their own family. This one type of animal should be its own family. Not everybody's on board. Yeah, type of animal should be its own family, not everybody's on board. Yeah, but I think everyone listening has a family member that they think maybe should be classified as their own family.

Always naked, buck teeth, that family member. Rest, yeah. Uncle Rusty. Like you mentioned, the naked mole rats live throughout the horn of Africa, generally in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. And they are doing great. There are a lot of them.

This isn't one of those. I feel like most of the animals we cover have some sort of threatened designation, but they're killing it and they're doing awesome. There's lots of them. One reason why is because the land that they live under is so arid that it's not usually disturbed for crop land. So they don't get into fights with farmers typically, which would be a big problem for them because they would eat all the farmers crops and the farmers would kill them all. So because they don't really dwell where humans tend to dwell, that's a big mark in their

favor from what I saw. Totally. I mean, hopefully you've looked up a picture, like pulled off to the side of the road or something if you're driving to see a picture of these things. So you have an idea of what we're talking about, if not do so, because you might think they look like maybe a newborn guinea pig or something? Maybe. I mean, that's being kind, I guess. And that's the adults. Or, yeah, exactly. But they did diverge from guinea pigs,

they believe about 50 million years ago. So they're related in a way, but like you said, they really are their own thing. Yeah, and they're pretty much not related to moles or rats. It's their closest relative is gu to skinny pigs like you said. And one of the things that really makes naked mole rats special is that they are phosphorial, which is a type of animal that lives underground pretty much all the time. They don't live underground when it's hot out and then come out at night to feed or hunt. They live underground. I'm sure plenty of them spend their entire lives

underground. And their lives are significant in length, as we'll see. But that's a big distinction because there's a lot of animals that live underground, but spend time above ground too, not naked mole rats. No, they love it down there. And as we've covered in what was the biospealiology episode, I think? Yeah. And we also, didn't we also do one on other cave dwelling animals?

Or was that that one? I think it was that one. All right, either one or two of those, but we, you know, they have some features that other animals who live generally deep underground for a lot of their lives have, which is not really useless eyes. I mean, they have, technically they have eyes,

they can sense bright and dark, but they're basically blind, and they don't have ears really either. They have little tiny ear flaps, if they have anything at all. They're about three to four inches long, except for the queen who can be a bit bigger. Talk about the queen because it's very, very interesting. And then they have a little short tail, sort of a tapered tail, and then a little piggy

snout. But what's really like when you look at a naked mole rat, the first thing you're going to notice is they're naked and really wrinkly and funny looking. And then those chompers up front. Yeah, because their teeth, if you look closely, they come out of their face, not their mouth. They can close their mouth. Which is still at their teeth out. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

It's an adaptation that they came up with where they can use their teeth to dig while their mouth is close to they keep dirt from getting in their mouths. Yeah, it's amazing. And you dug up some extra stuff which is pretty remarkable about those teeth. And we're going to talk a little bit about the teeth, probably a lot about the teeth. But they basically function as a sense organ. Scientists have found that the Somo, man, I practice that one too, somaticence-recortex, that's not even a hard one.

Which is involved in the sense of touch is very, very large, and about a third of it is dedicated to those insiders, so they actually feel through those teeth. Yeah, like you said, it's a sense organ, that's really cool. They also use them not only to sense the world, but also to carry stuff around.

They can use them like needle-nose pliers. They can move them independently in all sorts of different weird directions. I don't know of any other animal that has teeth as a sense organ. It's pretty cool. No, how about those jaws, too? So because their teeth are so important to them, not just for eating, but for digging and creating their habitats and for defense too, their jaws, I think 25% of their entire muscle mass of their body is in their jaws, specifically in the jaw muscle,

the deep masseter muscle. If you put three fingers upward on your cheek so that you're kind of making that scouts on or thing, the finger closest to you is just touching your ear, the outside of your ear, or where your touch is your face. I'm doing it. And then you start making a chewing sound, or chewing motion. Do you feel how your cheek is pushing out against your fingers beneath? I do.

That's your masseter. And then do one other thing. Leave your fingers there. Don't move. No, all right. But slide them up a little further to your temple and then do the same thing. Do you feel that muscle moving?

Yeah, that's the headache button. Exactly. That's your masseter muscle as well. So we have them too, but only about 1% of our muscle mass is invested in our jaws. A quarter of their muscle mass is invested in their jaw, and specifically in the masseter complex. Yeah, it's amazing.

And that makes those teeth basically, like, it's sort of like a shovel chisel combination. They can shovel. It is a shovel. They have tremendous power. Or a chisel. To screw. A snoop dog has that trait.

I think we get sued for that. And we'll be like, hey, go after the naked mole rat snoop. I saved those sideburns years ago. So they use them, you know, they're scraping, they're always digging, they're always carrying dirt. Like you mentioned, they can close their little lips because they don't want to get dirt in their mouths. And they're always just sort of at work. Digging tunnels, they're like Charles Bronson

and the greatest gate. Right, pretty much the two they've modeled their entire society on. Yeah, and they do this in a little, like an assembly line. Yeah. constant in the greatest state. Right, pretty much the two they've modeled their entire society on. Yeah, and they do this in a little, like an assembly line, they will nod into the earth and they will pass dirt back and eventually that dirt forms what else? A mole hill.

Yeah, I saw there was kind of like a conveyor belt. So there's one naked mole rat at the front doing all the digging and there's a bunch of mole rats following them that are sweeping like a specific pile out. And as they're sweeping it further and further back, and as they're moving backward, they finally get to the end. And then there's a larger mole rat

that is kicking it outside, forming that mole hill you were talking about. And then when the mole rat, that's been sweeping it to the guy who's kicking it out of the tunnel, they climb back over the people in front of them and go to the front of the line again. So it is, it's like this conveyor about this just tunneling, like boring through the earth. And this is really hard packed dry dirt, too. It's not easy stuff to chew through. No, they make, they make easier work out of it when things are a little wetter, but generally this dirt is fairly dry, like you said.

So it's pretty tough. And we mentioned that they're a hairless. They do have some tiny little hairs here and there. They have some sensory hairs on their faces and tails and a little bit of hair between their toes so they can sweep away that dirt, like you were talking about. But if you look at a naked mole rat, I mean, the first thing that you're gonna say is that things naked and look at those teeth

and I imagine a large one would be terrifying. Because they're pretty small, like we said, just a few inches. Yes. Did you watch the Smithsonian naked mole rat cams? No, but there's so much of that in fast-cheap and out of control. Okay. It's amazing. I had not fast-cheap and out of control. Okay.

It's amazing. I had not seen them before and they are really cute. They're so studious and so serious about the digging around and moving around that they're doing. They're pushing this thing over there and they're super cute when you watch them. Apparently they're not very aggressive. There's only specific instances where they show aggression, but for the most part they're not very aggressive. There's only specific instances where they show aggression, but for the most part, they're pretty peaceful. Even though to us, they would seem pretty rude,

because they climb over one another, in part because they are very closely related. So, you know, they're fine with that. But also because their habitats are enormous, but they still live on top of each other. Like a naked mole rat tunnel system can be comprised of miles of tunnel that spread out over like five acres of land. And yet when they live together, they live in a really tight, close knit community. That they literally crawl on top of each other. Yeah, they crawl all over each other like it's nothing like they're crawling over like a rock or something and they are just as good at going backwards as forwards. Yeah, when we say that like we mean it they've they've they've done little races and they found that naked more ads can go backwards just as fast as they can go forward and are just as coordinated,

which isn't super coordinated, but we're talking naked mole rats here that's in a smallish tunnel. Well, I'm pretty stimulated Chuck, do you want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. Since you're stimulated. I got a D-stem. A brand new historical true crime podcast. The year is 1800 City Hall, New York. The first murder trial in the American Judicial System. A man-sense trial for the charge of murder. Even with defense lawyers, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the case, this is probably the most famous trial you've never heard of.

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You feeling good? Yeah, but I'm going to get stimulated again, Chuck, because there's so much more... We haven't even really tapped into the most amazing stuff about naked mole rats. All of this is neat. This is interesting, but just wait everybody. Just you wait. Should we talk about respiration? I think we should. Well, here's the deal. They're underground in these very tight spaces. And down there, because there are so many naked mole rats, I don't think we said, but they live in colonies and we'll get to the social structure because it's very, very interesting among mammals for sure, and especially

among rodents. But, you know, 70 to 200 to 300 naked mole rats living together in these tightish quarters, even though it's spread out, you know, they're small tunnels because they're small animals. And there's not a lot of oxygen down there. They can get by on a startlingly low amount of oxygen. Yeah, in an environment that's also high in carbon dioxide, like you or I would suffocate the death in a naked mole rat tunnel system. I need an animal, what I think. Yeah, pretty much. And the reason why is because they've become adapted to that kind of environment,

a low oxygen, high carbon dioxide environment, and the way that they've adapted is they have evolved a system that aside from naked mole rats has only been found in plants. That's right. So oh, keep going. So the fruit toast pump, we all have fruit toast pumps, but ours are all in our guts. The naked mole rats have a fruit toast pump that uses a metabolic pathway that takes fruit toast to be burned for energy in their brains. And the reason fruit toast is so important is because it can be burned anaerobically.

You don't need oxygen to power that system of energy creation or unlocking energy, I guess, from the fruit toast. You can just do it without oxygen. So they lower their metabolism enough that they don't need much oxygen. They can get by on the burning fruit toast until there's more oxygen available again. Yeah, it can live in an atmosphere that is 20% oxygen and 80% CO2 and they've been able to survive for at least five hours with as little as 5% oxygen, 5%. Yeah, you couldn't do that. I think 20% is like the Andes, 5% is not much at all. No. So there's another thing I said that they were generally peaceful. They're

generally peaceful within the colony. Apparently, there's a behavior that Queens have where they show up and they'll just start shoving workers around. Did you see that? Yeah. And they're not quite sure why. They can be aggressive at times. Yeah, but it's mostly just the Queen and she's mostly shoving workers. They thought maybe it was because they were being lazy, but the worker is much more likely to be shoved while they're working, which just seems obnoxious. Maybe it's just a little reminder, you know?

Yeah, maybe. But other than that, they aren't very aggressive, unless you're a naked mole rat from another colony. And from what I saw, if you stumble into a naked mole at colony and you're an outsider, they will kill you. Yeah, it's not pretty. If you're a predator as well, they will band together and stack on one another and reveal those teeth if a centipede or a snake or something comes down there. And yeah, and like you said, if you're not a member of the family,

and I guess we should go ahead and say it, like they're all the same family, right? Isn't there a lot of incest going on? Yeah, let's talk about their incest, shall we? Sure. So they imbrede. The reason why is because they have one queen that's just part of their hierarchy, their social structure.

And the queen has a very limited number of people to breed with. She basically says, you, you, and you, you're my breeding males. Everybody else, not only don't breed with the queen, somehow, mysteriously, the queen keeps worker males and worker females from even maturing sexually. Yes.

They have no idea how this is happening because if you take a nonbreeding worker male in a nonbreeding worker female out of their colony, within days, they develop adult mature reproductive systems and can reproduce. Yeah, like something going on. A male literally will, they have tiny kind of buried testicles, but five days after they're out of that hole, those testicles literally grow. Yeah, you should see that on fast motion. It's really funny.

Please tell me that's not existing. Oh, but there's a gift out there somewhere. Okay. I haven't seen it, though. Yeah, but it's weird. It's this suppression of reproducibility. It's the queen. It's just the queen and all the other males have their hands up.

And only if you get to go in there and take care of business. Yeah, so very frequently, her own offspring, that's just how it goes. For take care of business. Yeah, so very frequently, her own offspring, that's just how it goes. For a couple of reasons. One, she makes so many, she has so many litters over her lifetime. And then also they are, they're very long lived.

I think in captivity, they live up to 30 years so far. I saw it longer too. I saw one that was like close to 40. So we've only been studying them in captivity for about 40-ish years, maybe 50. So we don't really know what their actual, like, the upper limit of their lifespan is. We'll talk about that later. But a mouse, if it's lucky, lives five years in captivity. These guys are living 30, 40 years, right? That's old.

Yeah, I saw the Queen's not in captivity. It's usually like 18 to 20 years. Okay. So underground, which is still remarkable. Yeah, that's super remarkable. So during that time, because she's creating so many letters and there's outsiders who come to the colony get killed. She has to, it's inevitable. She's reproducing with her own kin. And so they've found genetically chucked that the average genetic similarity between just any two members of a colony is about 0.5. In human terms, 0.5 is what a parent

in their offspring has. These are just brothers and sisters have point five similarity. I think between the queen and her offspring, it's like point eight. And you're like, what is all this getting at? The highest number you can get to is 1.0. And that's for identical twins that came from the same egg. They're almost genetically identical twins that came from the same egg. They're almost genetically, perfectly identical, and the queen and her offspring are like at 0.8. So they are super, dooper, imbred. Yeah, I mean, it's only them down there.

What happens underground, stays underground, you know what I'm saying? I guess so. The other cool thing, or another cool thing about them living underground is that they're basically cold-blooded. I think scientifically, technically, they're probably not, but effectively they are cold-blooded mammals because they don't have self-regulating body temperature.

They regulate their body temperature in a few ways, but they basically call it behavioral regulation, thermoregulation. They will work harder sometimes to get their, you know, to get the heat going. They will stack themselves on one another when it's colder, and they will go higher in the tunnel system closer to the surface to feel that sun's heat, but still not go outside to warm up. When it's colder, they will, I'm sorry, when it's warmer, they will go deeper and have more space in between them and stuff like that. And yet, despite all that, despite not being able

to regulate their own temperature, they still maintain about in the 80s Fahrenheit. That's how warm it is in a naked mole rat tunnel system. And the humidity's like 50 to 60%. It's balmy. It's balmy, it's warm, and it's not balmy because it's full of water because get this. I know you know this.

I'm talking to the people in podcast lately. I know. They don't drink water. They don't say like, they try to seal off those tunnels. It's not probably not possible to completely seal them off, but they would flood very easily if they didn't do as good a job as they do already. But it's not like they dig little water wells and let them fill up and go lap it up, you know, through those teeth. They don't drink water, they get water from what they eat.

We said they didn't go out to find food and stuff, so you're wondering what are they eating like little insects who stumble in there? No. No, they are eating roots and bulbs and rhizomes and tubers, basically what part of the plant is underground. They're eating that stuff, and that's also where they're getting every bit of water they need.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Again, they live in the desert. and that's also where they're getting every bit of water they need. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Again, they live in the desert. So this is where desert plants store their waters in big tubers and bulbs. And typically, when a naked mole rat goes out and stumbles into a tuber, they'll start bringing it back to the rest of the colony. They're very, very good like that. They really look out for one another.

But once in a while, they'll find a tuber that's like 50 pounds. That's just huge and they're no naked. More I could do anything with that. So they eat it in situ and they do it in such a way that they'll bore a hole into this giant tuber, eat the inside flesh and then come back out and they'll plug the hole with dirt and then they'll let the whole with dirt, and then they'll let the tuber regenerate, let the plant like regrow,

and then they'll go back and do it again once the plant's healthy again. And that needs... It's amazing. They're not doing this in any kind of, I don't think we mentioned, like, their sleep cycles. They work together,

like very, very well, and we'll talk about that structure more in a minute,. They're not, they work together like very, very well and we'll talk about that structure more in a minute, but it's not like they get up in the morning, they don't know what morning is, they're underground. So as far as anyone can tell, they don't have any kind of regular sleep cycle going on. They just, they work when they're supposed to work

and they work till they get tired and then they sleep. Yeah, there's no morning underground. Isn't that grim? Yeah, but that's a song title of some sort of death metal band probably. I think you could make it the titular song title for the album. The naked mole rats. Sure.

That's the name of the man. I guess no, I mean like there is no morning underground is the name of the man. I guess no. I mean like there is no morning underground is the name of the first single and the album. Yeah, and the album. And then in parentheses, it says like believe me or something like that. Sure. Uh, or can we talk, I mean, we talked about what they eat, but we should also talk about the other thing they sometimes eat. I'm kind of excited about this. Take it away then. They eat poop. They eat their own poop.

They eat their own poop. They eat others poop. Apparently the adults of the colony will poop directly into the mouths of the pups when they need it, when they want it. And this all sounds gross and it is. I think even other types of mole rats are like, good, God, have you seen what our cousins do

and we're not around? But there's a good reason for this. This is actually a big strategy. They have a gut to digest these really hard tubers. This is not the kind of like root vegetables you would get at a grocery store. This is wild, sub-Saharan Africa tubers that they're eating and trying to digest.

And they can't possibly digest it all the first time. So when they poop, it's still chock full of food so they don't waste it. They just eat the poop. That's right. And they have a hind gut, because herbivores often have things inside their body that are gonna help them digest this really virus plant matter.

And they do have a hind gut that is really good for that, but it's still not good enough. And so like you said, they eat it again, and that pretty much takes care of it. There's one other really cool thing about it too. Well, there's two other cool things about eating poop one, when the adults poop into the pup's mouths, they're not just feeding them.

They're also transferring gut microbiota, which will help them protect them from disease, will help them digest stuff even better. It's pretty neat. And then they also think we talked about suppressing the reproductive dis of the other females, the queen can somehow repress them. They don't know how she's doing that But they do think that the reason why other non-worker females Help raise pups with no incentive whatsoever and with no reproductive organs or hormones Is that when they eat the queen's poop she passes just enough estrogen to them to make them want to take care of the pups.

That is astounding. It is. And there's one more part to the poop. We mentioned if you come in and you're from another colony, you're in big trouble. They also think that feeding the poop and also occasionally rolling in the poop is a way that they can impart a colony smell smell that everyone's gonna have. Yeah, so everybody will smell the same. So if somebody shows up, you're like,

you're not Terry and then they're dead. Right, because they can tell from your smell because their sense of smell is just ridiculously acute. That's basically what they have smell touch and then hearing somehow because they make more vocalizations than any other rodent on the planet and yet they basically don't

have ears. So I'm not sure how they do that. Yeah, I mean, we can talk about that a little bit. They have, the queen has a toilet song when she goes poo-poo in her toilet chamber. And I guess we should also say that they have different chambers for different things. They have bathrooms and they have bedrooms. They have these sort of expressway superhighways that are a little larger where they're just crawling all over each other back and forth. But they have different rooms and one of them is a bathroom and she sings a little toilet song when

she goes. And they think that might be like, hey, I just pooped. Does anyone going to come in here and eat this? Or am I going gonna have to throw it at you? She also says, hey you three that I picked out earlier. I'm ready to have intercourse with you. So here here's my song for that. We mentioned those predators. There are sounds for predator invasions. And then you know, and this might lead us into talking about the social structure, maybe after a break. Yeah. But they do have little chirps that will signal their social order, which is still not quite figured out.

But maybe we'll take a break there and talk about that. Let's do it. All right, we'll be right back. A brand new historical true crime podcast. The year is 1800 City Hall, New York. The first murder trial in the American Judicial System. A mass dance trial for the charge of murder. Even with defense lawyers, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the case, this is probably the most famous trial you've never heard of.

When you lay suffering a sudden violent brutal death, I hope you'll think of me. Starring Allison Williams. I don't need anything simplified, Mr. Hamilton, thank you. With Tony Goldwyn as Alexander Hamilton. Don't be so sad, that's right. It doesn't suit you. Written and created by me, Allison Flock. Why are you doing that goal, I'm gonna do it! Listen to E. Rast, the murder of Elma Sands.

She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl. No! No! Until she met that man right there. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Apple Murder! What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here?

13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton. All residents, please return to your habitation. Like stuff on your feet. You're new here, so I'll say it once. No talking.

Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead to Me. Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time. So this is a prison then. No, it's a rehabilitation center.

Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. I'm going to get out. And how may I ask, or are you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Hillary Clinton back with a new season of my podcast, you and me both.

On this show, I'll be talking to people I admire about many things, including one of my favorite subjects, Getting Things Done. We'll hear from folks and positions of power, like Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries, but also writers and actors, community organizers, really anyone who shows up every day and keeps doing the work. There's so much out there to distract us, but all of my guests bring tremendous passion and commitment, an ability to block out the noise, and I should probably warn you lots of sports metaphors.

You stay calm and focused on releasing the ball, getting it to a receiver, and hopefully getting it into the end zone on behalf of the American people. So join me for this conversation and more. Listen to you and me both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we mentioned early on that they are a part of the Bathy Urgid. Is that right? Yeah.

Alright. Bathy Urgid group, and they are generally pretty solitary. They may live with a few others here and there, but they don't do what naked mole rats do, which is colonies that can get up into the hundreds. The closest thing that you compare a naked mole rat to is like an ant colony. Yeah, or bees.

Like you find you sociality, they're you social, I think you said before. You you find usosiality, they're usosial, I think you said before. You find that in the insect world, not in the mammal world. Apparently there's only one kind of mole rat that has usosial hierarchy, but there's even, like it's just nothing compared to the rigidity of the naked mole rats.

Yeah, so usosial means it is, like you said, it is rigid, it is very defined, but they don't fully understand that structure. In full, they have some little clues. I think some of the males vary in size a little bit, and I think they think that the ones that are a little bigger may be higher up on the, you know, social structure. They, most of them are workers, but some of them, it seems, are specifically soldiers that kind of are on the front lines when that scorpion comes down. Yeah, they have a division of labor.

What else? Well, I've got, so the fact that they're usosial is not intuitive because no one knew that there were such a thing as mammals that were U-social. And I found out that they've only known that these things were U-social for since like the 80s or 90s. And the way that they found out was really astounding because some of these early naked mole rat researchers were like, where are, why aren't these mole rats pregnant?

Like I have not seen a pregnant female, because they didn't know that it's just the queen that's creating the litters, right? And there was a biologist named Richard Alexander who described a hypothetical U-social mammal species. And somebody who was a researcher named Jennifer Jarvis who was a naked mole rat researcher was like, buddy, you just described

naked mole rats, and I think you just solved this puzzle, this mystery, that they're actually a you social mammal species, and that's how we figured it out, just totally by chance. Yeah. And, you know, we mentioned the queen a few times. The queen is obviously at the top of that you social structure, and much like bees that we've talked about a lot, that queen runs the show. There is almost always only one queen. I think in rare cases there could be a couple of queens, but when it's time for a new queen

to take the crown, there is a big fight. The females sometimes will kill each other to become queen. Oh, yeah. But it's a violent affair to become queen. And they think that this is one of the reasons, one of the few reasons why the queen ends up larger is because you may start out a little larger if you're the one defeating the other females. And then this is another remarkable naked mole rat fact. Once you become queen, your body literally gets longer.

Your spine lengthens. Yeah, like I saw a picture, I think Ed added it in this article, the knee of like the first litter queen, you know, five litter queen, ten litter queen. And that like, I think the ten litter queen, her spine is about at least one and a half times the length of what it would have been during her first letter. That's how significantly their body changes so that they can have larger and larger letters over time. Yeah, it's remarkable. And how many, so they can have up to like 10 litters total throughout their life? I think it can get even even larger than that I've seen and I think that the number of pups in a litter the record is 27

Oh wow yeah, so they're having a lot and they can have tons of litters over their lifetime and then As many as you know 27 and a single litter, they're really reproducing. There's a lot of pressure on them to produce. You know what I mean? Oh, totally. We mentioned that they almost never, never go outside of the cave system and the tunnel system. The very few times that they've seen it happen

is like, they call it like a mini migration where they will see one maybe try to go to a different colony. I don't know if they figured out why they would leave their colony, but periodically that will happen, and they will travel at night, of course, because if they went out in the sun in the desert during the day, they would probably fry like little sausages with teeth, like you said. For sure. Br bratwurst. So they also think that one of the main reasons that they would ever leave the colony and go up top

is to form a new colony, kind of like a peaceful, I guess a peaceful coup, a bloodless coup that actually leaves the existing queen in place. Cause you know, bees do that. When they swarm, that's a bunch of bees in a colony that's gotten overcrowded, going and forming their own colony. The apparently as you social mammals, that's what Naked Moorats do as well sometimes.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. And I guess we should talk about the final remarkable fact about naked mole rats is that they don't age in the sense that we think about aging. They get older on the calendar, but they have shown a remarkable lack of like their body and their organs and like their tissue and stuff like that, showing signs of traditional aging. Yeah, which is, I mean, they get up to 30, like six times the average age of a mouse or the far end age of a mouse, and they're just not aging, no inflammation,

their bones don't deteriorate, they just are ageless, and people, researchers who started to notice this are like, what is going on? And they have kind of zeroed in on one particular molecule called the hyaluronon. And you might be familiar with that. Hyaluronic acid, which people love to put in like their facial moisturizers and stuff like that because it's found in skin. Well, it's also found in naked mole-retts skin and it's found in aces. They have 10 times the amount that humans do and the molecules of higher luron that

they do have are like five times larger in size. Yeah, so they have more bigger, higher loron molecules. And they think that it's possible, because they're very resistant to, they found out that at first they were very resistant to tumors and cancer. And so they're like, in the naked mole rat, does the, is that the secret to curing cancer? And I don't think that anyone is like saying that they're right around the corner from figuring

that out, but they have gotten this high allure on and they have put it in mice because mice are very cancer prone, which is one reason we study mice when we study cancer. But they have found that these mice do much better and they live longer and they It's almost like an immediate shot of youth when they get this stuff Yeah, when they transfer the high alert and on synthase 2 gene into mice They really benefit from it and then on the cancer front when they When they suppress the tumor suppressing genes that are found in mammals in the naked mole rats,

they still don't get tumors. But when they suppress the gene that expresses high alert on, they start to get tumors. So they've pretty much zeroed in on high alert on as some sort of an anti-tumor agent, and it's a gooey sugar, and they've shown that when you remove it from a petri dish of Nikamore at cells the cells will goop together, but they won't stick together as long as there's hyaluron in there Yeah, and it's in it's it's in there like you said they're connected tissue

So it's one of the reasons they have That that loose kind of stretchy, we are looking skin, is because of this high luron on, and we went over, we drove right by one of the facts that you dug up, this pretty amazing, is that in their body can move inside their skin without their skin moving? They can turn about halfway around within their skin, it's that loose.

So like they could be doing that in front of your face and you would not know it because their skin is just static. Yeah, you'd be like, wow, why is there head over there all of a sudden? Right. There still seem to be facing forward. Doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And that skin comes in handy when they're calling around those tunnels and

slipping by each other and stuff like that. I mean, there are reasons why their skin is like that. And it's just remarkable, these old guys. Yeah, and they think that the anti-aging, anti-tumor traits that they've developed over time are just a byproduct of the actual adaptation, which is super loose skin that's created by cells that aren't allowed to stick together. Yeah, and they've also found out that they don't experience pain like other mammals do. And you would of course, the first thing you think of is like pain is a good thing because that tells you when you've got your hand on a hot stove or what have you. It's not the first thing I

think of. It's not. No, I think of. That's great. I don't like pain. Oh, sure. But it's a, you know, we have to have pain so we know when we're experiencing something that could kill us. It's granted. But they have just enough of a pain receptor to like keep them from dying stupidly, but not enough to actually feel pain.

And I saw this one fact, I guess, from an experiment. That means like somebody actually did this. They said that their skin doesn't respond to pain when you put acid or capsaicin, like what they put in pepper, hot pepper stuff, like in pepper spray, that's capsaicin. And their skin doesn't react when you put that stuff on their skin.

Yeah, or they don't, even if their skin's showing signs of burning, they're just like, what? I didn't hear you. No, their skin literally doesn't respond to acid. Oh, so the skin itself doesn't. The skin itself doesn't. Okay, but I get the impression also that if you like hurt one, I hate to even talk about this, but if you hurt one, it wouldn't even notice it because it's pain threshold is so high.

And the reason they think that this is the case is because their metabolism is so fragile, they're on such like a razor's edge that they think that their nervous system evolved to, like you said, just give them enough pain signals to get by, but not enough to really require a lot of extra energy. They don't need that kind of sensation to survive. Does that mean in some lab somewhere they draw straws to see who has to thump the naked mole rat? No, but yeah, I'll bet that's a bummer day for you at the office.

Would be for me. I think that's all the amazing facts. I'm looking over my notes. I don't think there's anything else, is there? I don't think so. The only thing I would say is go to the Smithsonian Nink and Molrat camps as soon as you can. They're very cute and to watch. Yeah. And watch fast sheep and out of control. It's a great documentary because he somehow manages manages to, Errol Morris does, to tie each of these professions into a, into a, a theme, a common theme. It's really interesting. The guy's good. And if you think about it, it's robots that this guy's making that look like insects. It's plants

that a guy is shaping to look like animals. Wait, wait, are you spoiling it right now? No. Okay. These are just the jobs they have. Okay. The naked mole rat guy, I'm trying to figure out how that figured in that way. I can't remember. It's been a while. But anyway, this guy's enthusiasm,

the scientists that they found is just very contagious. How much he loves these naked mole rats. I could see it. I mean, you could do a lot worse to pin your career to that animal, it's biologists, like they are just coming up with some amazing stuff. GREED. So since I mentioned amazing stuff in Chuck said,

agreed, that means everybody's time for listening to mail. That's right. But I'm gonna shout out that naked mole rat guy. His name is Ray Mendez. And he's, he's pretty amazing. Nice. All right, so I'm gonna call this, let me see. I'm gonna open up the folder. Oh boy.

You guys, you don't know if this means when Chuck opens up the folder, it gets real. Oh boy, that's an old one. I'm gonna read that one. That might be out of date. Okay. I'll read. Oh, okay, this is fairly recent. Uh, Hoya. I remember we talked about the Georgetown Hoya's. Mm-hmm. And we're like, what the heck is a Hoya? We heard from a few Hoya's. And this was from Mark Mayer, or Mark Meyer, excuse me. Hey guys, first time writer, a long time listener, graduate of Georgetown U. And, uh, I actually have some knowledge to give back. Your answer to the question, what is a Hoya, is exactly. Let me explain. What I was taught

was that Georgetown's nickname came from the stone walls, named after the University's beautiful walls, or the football team's defense, depending on who you ask. The good Jesuits that we are, our cheer was the Latin translation of what rocks, hoia, saksa. And that was eventually shortened to hoia's. The mascot change, but the nickname stuck. So if a Georgetown student what a hoia is, the standard tongue-in-cheek response is something like correct or exactly. What is a Hoya? Because the word Hoya literally translates to what?

What is Hoya? Is how I should have written it. Now I understand why people don't like Georgetown graduates. I never knew, but now I do. Mark says this is some 19th century who's on first type of fun. Hope this helps. Thanks for the quality entertainment that has gotten me through countless mose, drives, and runs. I guess, mowing lawn.

Sure. All right, that's for Mark Meyer. Thanks a lot, Mark. That was great knowledge you imparted. Thank you very much. I can't wait till somebody asks me what's a hoya Can't wait to say exactly And if you want to be like Mark and send us some info that we didn't know you can put it in an email and send it off

To stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.com Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio For more podcasts my heart radio visit, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A brand new historical true crime podcast. When you lay suffering a sudden brutal death, starring Allison William, I hope you'll think of me, erased the murder of Elma Sands.

She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl, until she met that man right there. Written and created by me, Allison Flop. Is it possible, sir? We're standing by for your answer. Erased the murder of Elma Sands, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your answer. Erased. The murder of El Missant. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

13 Days of Halloween, Penance. Season four of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. If I am under arrest, you have to tell me what I'm charged with. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead to Me. Please, you've been some kind of mistake. I'm not supposed to be here. How do you know?

I'm innocent. Are any of us truly innocent? Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. Listen to 13 Days of Halloween on the IHART Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to carve out your own spiritual path? On a quest for meaning, purpose, or a sense of belonging?

Welcome to What's God Got to Do With It, a podcast with a fresh and relatable take on spirituality and faith. I'm your host, Leanne Ellington, and I want to meet you exactly where you are on your own journey, without judgment or shame, and without worrying about whether you're doing it air quotes right. It's a place where faith meets science, all while inviting you into the conversation that your heart, soul, and spirit needs.

Listen to what's God got to do with it on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. wherever you listen to podcasts.