
Naked mole rats can survive 18 minutes without oxygen - sohkamyung
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/naked-mole-rat-oxygen-take-my-breath-awaaaaaaaay/523515/?single_page=true
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BugsJustFindMe
I guess this is kinda cool, but you have to look past the headline.

18 minutes without oxygen isn't far-fetched for humans. The Guinness world
record for "longest time breath held voluntarily (male)" is a bit over 24
minutes.

So, yeah, that line in the article that says "no warm-blooded mammal
can...come close to the naked mole-rat’s 18-minute record" seems to be
painfully and stupidly wrong.

The interesting part is not that they survive for 18 minutes. The interesting
part is that they do fine at 5% oxygen and that seemingly they (almost?) hold
their breaths involuntarily after they pass out at lower levels.

~~~
e12e
Not to mention Dolphins, seals and great whales?

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pvaldes
yup, Sperm whales can hold their breath for 90 minutes they divert voluntarily
all the blood to focus in the most important organs only.

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stevenwoo
Can someone explain how the mole rats that stop breathing and are revived
after simply reintroducing oxygen into the container? How does the O2 get into
the animals lungs/blood stream if the animal stopped breathing?

~~~
Someone
They stop breathing, but don't die. Presumably, when whatever mechanism they
use to measure oxygen concentration tells them that oxygen levels are high
enough, they start breathing again.

~~~
ralfd
Yes, obviously, but parent asked _how_!

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agumonkey
Uh weird, they survive through glucose metabolysm instead of the aerobic
pathway.. which is exactly what cancer cells do to operate with their bad
blood supply. NM rats are cancer free yet live like one.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Regarding the set of things that look like cancer, I recently realized that
_human hair_ is quite like cancer. It just grows and grows and grows,
seemingly without limit.

So are the fingernails.

~~~
Sharlin
But hair and fingernails are not alive. They are just extrusions of dead
material. 3D printing, basically. Plus all hair has a growth limit after which
it's discarded. Head hair of course has a longer limit than other hair.

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ivanhoe
In addition to all of these strange features listed in the article, they're
also the only poikilothermic mammal. Most of the time their body temperature
is not regulated and it changes with the environment. But unlike reptiles or
fish, if the outside temperature goes too high or too low, naked mole rats can
switch back to normal homeothermic behavior and self-regulate the body
temperature as needed. This way they can survive extreme conditions, and still
when conditions are right they can save a lot of energy and survive long
periods of hunger without going into hibernation.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
Id always thought they werr just cold blooded. This is so much more
interesting!

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dhc02
Can't some whales go hours? I mean these guys are still strange, but this
headline is terrible.

~~~
kej
Yeah, sperm whales can do 90 minutes and the longest recorded beaked whale
dive is over two hours.

Heck, the _human_ record is something like 20 minutes, by some free diver.

~~~
ddeck
To clarify, the static apnea record breathing normal air beforehand is just
under 12 minutes.

The record you are referring to involves breathing pure oxygen beforehand, is
24 minutes, and is nonetheless amazing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_apnea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_apnea)

I'd always thought the egg laying, electrolocating Platypus was the strangest
mammal:

 _" The platypus feeds by neither sight nor smell, closing its eyes, ears, and
nose each time it dives. Rather, when it digs in the bottom of streams with
its bill, its electroreceptors detect tiny electric currents generated by
muscular contractions of its prey"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus)

~~~
daxfohl
FWIW geckos need quantum mechanics just to walk.

~~~
stickfigure
...and I, for one, welcome our new platypus-gecko hybrid overlords!

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maturz
I thought the egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed,
electrorecepting, venomous platypus was the strangest mammal.

~~~
slazaro
Naked mole rats are very interesting, if I remember correctly, they behave
just like social insects (bees, termites, ants, etc.) in many ways, but
they're mammals.

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tropo
Picture a snake trying to invade the naked mole rat tunnel system. There is
almost no oxygen.

Maybe normal parasites also die from lack of oxygen.

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letsbechefs
They metabolize fructose, rather than just holding their breath. And they can
survive for over 5 hours in a low oxygen environment.
[https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-naked-mole-rats-
oxygen.html](https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-naked-mole-rats-oxygen.html)

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tkyjonathan
Humans are gonna need this soon with how climate change is going..

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siddharthgoel88
Why do people do such things or even talk about such stuff? This is so
depressing that such experiments are conducted to just know the fact how long
a rat can survive :(

~~~
Cyph0n
The state of medicine today is built on top of similar experiments. Countless
people -- yes, people, not just animals -- have died for us to discover so
much about the human body and its inner workings. It's unfortunate that most
people are either oblivious to this fact, or simply take the immense work
going on behind the scenes for granted. Keep this in mind next time you visit
the hospital ;)

Performing this experiment could have far-reaching implications. Perhaps it
ends up helping scientists understand whether or not such an adaptation could
transfer to humans. Or maybe it ends up being crucial in helping us understand
the function of a seemingly unrelated process in the human body.

It's important to note that ethics committees nowadays are _extremely_ strict
when it comes to using live subjects, humans or otherwise, so rest assured
that the experimenters did their best to minimize the suffering of the rats.
If they didn't, their work would probably never be accepted for funding and/or
publication.

~~~
marricks
When you talk about people dying for science is it Marie Curie and the
radiation poisoning, or Nazi's testing hypothermia? One is someone boldly (of
her own volition) pushing the bounds of science, the other is an oppressive
group performing horrendous experiments. Perhaps cancer patients on the verge
of death opting for a potentially life extending drug?

When humans test on humans (in modern societies where things haven't gone
horribly awry), care is given as to whether it's safe for the individual and
would help them. Consent is a big word you'd never hear in an animal study.
Animal testing is weighed against what benefits "science" in some way and some
sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric which doesn't seem to account for much.
Anecdotally, my girl friend is a neuroscientist and has heard about things
going on in labs that would make your skin crawl. One study that came to mind
is on rats defending their territory based on how much food they were given,
led to rats basically ripping each-other apart on camera.

We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost
13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could
have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so
trivially small.

~~~
Cyph0n
What I had in mind were the people who volunteered for experimental medical
procedures. Transplants, blood transfusions, neurosurgery, skin grafts, etc.
The techniques were only perfected through the suffering and death of a vast
number of nameless people.

> Animal testing is weighed against what benefits us in even the slightest way
> and is some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric.

> We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost
> 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could
> have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so
> trivially small.

That is a deeply philosophical argument. We can obviously agree that -- all
things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. But
exactly how much more valuable is it? Can we accurately quantify how many mice
can die so one human can live? Does it depend on the animal and its
intelligence, at least as we perceive it? The questions can go on and on with
no end in sight.

Now, I'm honestly not intimately familiar with what goes in the life sciences,
particularly when it comes to experimenting on live subjects. Nonetheless, I
am convinced that modern ethical standards are a good way to set universal
limits to what can be done to animals in a laboratory setting, while also
ensuring that we as humans benefit from the results. The alternatives would be
either to delay the discovery of new procedures because we don't want to hurt
animals, or to just experiment on humans directly. Neither of these sounds
like a better option to me.

~~~
marricks
I think splenda is a good example, in the end after killing thousands of
animals to approve it people discovered it can actually cause weight gain[1]!
Kind of destroys the original reason for it.

That's the thing with models, they're just models and ultimately they will
have flaws. We rely heavily on animal testing and have built up reasoning to
say why it's right, and that it helps, but we also don't know how much it
hurts our own science with ridiculous blunders like that. Another recen
inflammation, and they've been used for decades![2]

That being said, do I think science would progress slower without animal
testing, or just far less and safer for the animal testing? Sure, probably,
but it's worth the cost, and we'll get some benefits with less horrible
blunders by relying on models. Another example, science could progress a lot
faster if got rid of safety laws to test on humans, but somethings are just
wrong so we don't do it.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful-
trut...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful-truth-about-
diet-soda-and-weight-gain-according-to-science/#5ad67369462f)

[2]
[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/08/08/mou...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/08/08/mouse_models_of_inflammation_wrong_or_not)

~~~
marricks
Wow, looks like I accidentally a secente there and I can't change it.

> Another recent study showed that rats handle inflammation very differently
> than humans, making lots of past research useless and they've been used for
> decades![2]

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nouveau0
Do they have to be naked for this?

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rodorgas
Yes they do. If they had fur it would be another specie so wouldn't work.

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drcongo
How long can they survive when dressed?

