And consider Ray Mendez. Here is a happy man. When he first learned of the discovery of the naked mole rat, he felt the joy of a lottery winner. There are not supposed to be mammals like this. They have no hair and no sweat glands because they live always in a controlled environment—their tunnels beneath the African savanna, where they organize themselves like insects. Mendez lives with mole rats in his office, and creates museum environments for them. That means he has to ask himself a question no scientist before him has ever asked: What makes a mole rat happy? So that they can tell the
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