Monster Week—Last But Not Least
Here is our last monster of the series.
September 14, 2015
Moles and rats are not creatures known for their physical beauty. Yet both are relative cuties compared with their namesake, the naked mole-rat. As the name suggests, this burrowing rodent of East Africa is nearly hairless and covered in wrinkled, pink skin. Beady eyes, a piglike snout, and huge buck teeth complete the naked-mole rat’s signature look.
You might pity the naked mole-rat its hideous appearance. But looks mean little in the darkness of the mole-rat’s underground lair. The naked mole-rat spends its entire life underground, living with up to 300 of its relatives in a burrow consisting of many tunnels and rooms.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this little monster is its social structure. A naked mole-rat colony works more like an ant colony than a typical mammal family. Each naked mole-rat colony has one breeding female—the queen—and one to three breeding males. The rest of the mole-rats do not breed. They spend their time caring for the queen’s young, hunting for food, fighting off invaders, and otherwise contributing to the well-being of the colony.
The naked mole-rat queen is larger than the other members of the colony and can bear more than 100 pups in a year. She is no doting matriarch, either. She harasses (bullies) nonbreeding females and males to prevent them from breeding. If the queen dies, another female develops into a queen, grows larger, and begins to breed.
Naked mole-rats are unusual in many other ways. For example, their body temperature varies with the surrounding temperature more than that of any other mammal. Also, naked mole-rats can tolerate stagnant air with high levels of carbon dioxide.