The Mole Rat Prophecies

The naked mole rat, Heterocephalus glaber, is fleshy, furless,
buck-toothed and brazenly ugly. Yet what these small East African
rodents lack in terms of good looks, they make up with an
impressive array of biological quirks. These misnamed mammals are
neither moles nor rats, and in terms of their social behaviour are
actually closer to bees, wasps, ants, and termites than to other
backboned animals. They live in underground cooperative colonies of
up to 300 individuals with a dominant breeding “queen” and celibate
soldier and worker castes. Biologists have identified only one
other vertebrate--the closely related Damaraland mole rat--that
uses this rigid reproductive and social structure. Until the late
1970s scientists believed that this trait, known as eusociality,
was confined to insects. Naked mole rats deploy several impressive
feats of physiology, including an apparent imperviousness to pain,
a casual disregard for low-oxygen environments, and resistance to
cancer. Indeed, these unsightly creatures both baffle and buttress
Darwin's Theory of Evolution in multiple remarkable and apparently
self-contradictory ways.