The Naked Mole Rat Is Basically Immune to Everything
Meet the naked mole rat: a wrinkly, hairless, nearly blind, perpetually teeth-first creature that looks like a thumb someone accidentally left in a dryer. Scientists love it. Cancer researchers basically worship it.
Here's why. Naked mole rats almost never develop cancer. In decades of lab observation, spontaneous tumors in these animals are extraordinarily rare compared to mice, which get cancer constantly. The secret seems to be an unusually thick version of hyaluronic acid that packs their cells so tightly that tumors cannot get a foothold.
But that is not even the weirdest part. Naked mole rats cannot feel pain from acid or capsaicin, the stuff that makes chili peppers burn. Their pain neurons are simply wired differently. And when oxygen runs out completely, say in an overcrowded underground burrow, they switch to a metabolic backup system that runs on fructose instead of glucose. They can survive 18 minutes with no oxygen at all. A mouse dies in about 60 seconds.
Most rodents of their size live one to three years. Naked mole rats routinely hit thirty. Older individuals show almost no decline in fertility, bone density, or cognitive function. If you are a naked mole rat, you just sort of keep going, against all odds, indefinitely. Ugly has never looked so invincible.
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