To Save Yourself from Sextortion, Send Naked Mole Rats, Not Nudes
Where to start with the naked mole rat? Four inches long, hairless, pale, wrinkled, and spindly-legged, it lives in vast underground colonies in Africa, like a termite, and is more closely related to porcupines and guinea pigs than to moles or rats. It is the world’s only eusocial mammal, with hundreds of sterile workers serving a single, constantly pregnant queen. Virtually blind, it digs networks of tunnels using its four protruding incisors, which it can move individually, like chopsticks. It can run as quickly backward as forward. To aid its digestion, it eats its own feces. The naked mole rat can’t regulate its body temperature, as other mammals can, but it is immune to most forms of pain, doesn’t get cancer, and can live for thirty years, nine times longer than other rodents of similar size. Last month, scientists reported that naked mole rats can go without oxygen for as long as eighteen minutes—conditions that would kill a mouse in forty-five seconds and most humans twice over. They manage this by switching their metabolism to run on fructose instead of glucose, as no other animal can.
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