
Naked Mole Rats May Communicate by Eating Feces - pmoriarty
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/naked-mole-rats-eat-poop/568519/?single_page=true
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tejtm
In their stomach is a way of transporting the roots/tuber material they
forage, back to the hive. Also we do not begrudge bovines for having multiple
stomachs to break down cellulose why begrudge the NMRs for just having one but
using multiple times. Plus they are just amazing creatures, they are not more
likely to die when older than when younger (that is huge) which means they can
get old, consider when you have ever heard of a 32 year old hamster. They are
the only mammal which resists cancer (that I know of) zero cases in the wild
and only recently a couple of siblings who's colony lived at Disney for the
last 50 years were found to have tumors. They can survive without oxygen for
several times longer than other mammals(18 minutes if I recall) they do this
by switching from metabolizing glucose to fructose which I am not aware of any
other mammal doing. So what they do in the privacy of their burrows to achieve
these incredible results is of no moment when compared to what we can learn
from them.

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jenny_say_qua
Elephants have strong cancer resistance relative to their size [0]. In
general, larger animals have stronger cancer suppression mechanisms (elephants
being even more resistant than their size would suggest) which makes sense
given that larger animals have more cells, each of which has an independent
probability of getting cancer - if they didn't have stronger cancer
resistance, they would get cancer very quickly. I think NMRs are interesting
because despite being so small they have high resistance to cancer, which is
quite unusual.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858328/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858328/)

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dang
All: This is a good and on-topic article but dread leads me to a caveat: if
you comment, please resist the obvious internet reflexes.

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kjeetgill
> Naked-mole-rat queens use their hormone-rich poop to govern their
> subordinates.

> [The Queen's] subordinates take care of the pups, and they never make sex
> hormones of their own or become sexually mature.

Huh, so I guess the evolutionary strategy is that the Queen can give her
subjects just enough hormones to get them excited about motherhood, but too
few to become mothers themselves.

Also, what weird timing, "Minute Earth" put out this video 5 hrs ago:

    
    
      Why Do Some Animals Eat Poop?
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubt2fl11v5E

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LukeShu
Fascinating! Though, I'm not sure I would call that "communicating".

Perhaps a more truthful title would have been: "Naked mole rat behavior may be
influenced by feeding on hormone-carrying feces of the queen"

But that doesn't have the same appeal, and indeed: I probably wouldn't have
clicked the article if it had that less click-baity title.

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MisterWalter
“The whole idea that one organism would voluntarily ingest and be regulated by
the fecal by-products of another,” she says, “makes us wonder what is going
on.”

You and me both.

Past the squick factor though, it really is an amazing example of how many
forms life can take.

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golem14
[http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/why-does-my-
rabbit-...](http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/why-does-my-rabbit-eat-
his-poop)

More generally

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

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personjerry
I feel like most animals are less disgusted by feces than humans are; I wonder
if our aversion yet obsession with poop is socially constructed.

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MrBuddyCasino
I would suspect it is a function of how dangerous it is to eat the poop. For
us it is risky to do so, therefore aversion evolved.

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syphilis2
Observe this biological curiosity in action: the Smithsonian naked mole-rat
webcam goes live in 24 hours

[https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/naked-mole-
rat](https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/naked-mole-rat)

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js2
Life is so weird and fascinating.

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amelius
Isn't this what happens at a cellular level all the time?

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ChairmanLmao
Still better than facebook, I guess.

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iosDrone
Yeah, yeah, yeah... Pier Paolo Pasolini made a movie about it.

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Aloha
Well, I can chalk this down, as one of the more interesting and disgusting
things I've learnt this week.

Eww.

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tickthokk
New Silicon Valley trend: Bosses demand subordinates eat their feces.

> Well, I read this article that said eating poop makes you a better worker so
> I thought I'd give it a shot.

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tlarkworthy
I find it interesting that even super alturistic communist animals seem to
converge to having a nominated leader. It's seems fragile to me but biology is
telling us primary elections are a reasonable solution to distributed control.

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adiusmus
A lot of animals (including us) have a common ancestor. That animal had
dominance hierarchy characteristics. So pecking orders were already in our
ancestors well before we even became anything like us.

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wolco
Naked or hairless? Not too many mole rats where pants.

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ridgeguy
Naked because hairless, no pants in the evaluation.

More engagingly, it's also called a sand puppy [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-
rat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat)

