The Secret of The Mole Rat

The mole rat is the only mammal to this day that is also cold blooded. They live underground and have two teeth and tend to be in huge colonies. The most unique characteristics of these ugly little things is that can breathe in toxic air, that if present in any other mammal’s environment would quickly die of suffocation. This is not the only thing that makes them unique but also their extremely strange social environment. In the colony of three hundred one is a queen that only mates with three other mole rats were the others just search for food and supplies, much like ants in a way. Thomas Park and his collogues are studying this mammal to see how it adapts to its toxic environment. Over a long serious of experiments they found out that the mole rat has a mind that can still work even with a depilation of oxygen and that the brain doesn’t have a neurotransmitter that can send pain messages, well at least for acidic things like lemon. Park believes this is there evolution to help them survive under their toxic conditions. Park also observed that their whiskers were in a pattern and when ever he touched them it would bring out its teeth which for Park makes plenty of sense because a mammal that lives in a dark narrow tunnel with extreme toxicity levels, a sense of great touch is the only way for it to move around.
The mole rat to Park and his scientist is not only a pet but a real research topic on an animal that no one hasn’t yet really noticed. This topic is a direct study of the living environment and survival techniques that mole rats use and encounter to live in their type of environment. So this is directly related to biology because it is the study of the life of the mole rat.
Important information can be learned from the mole rat; since it is such a strange mammal it has really strange characteristics like for example it is cold blooded. That isn’t what really fascinates scientist but the way they can live in such toxic environments. Evolution really designed them to live on the worse condition possible for a mammal. Scientists try to use their studies on the mole rats to better understand how any creature can live under the earth for such a long time. These mammals can also tell us many things about how underground colonies communicate with one another even though they can be a hundred feet away.



Links:
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116600&org=NSF