Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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On most interpretations of the theistic God, He desires His creatures to love Him. However, the mystery of evil conflicts with this desire. It is difficult for rational humans to love God when they do not understand why there is so much evil. If the reasons for evil are beyond humans ken, God could at least make THIS abundantly clear. Why does He not do so? Moreover, why does not an all-powerful God have the power to raise human intelligence so humans can understand why there is so much evil? If there is reason for not doing this, then why is THIS not made clear? There is mystery on top of mystery here which seems to conflict explicitly with God's desire to be loved.
Michael Martin, "Third Statement" The Fernandes-Martin Debate
Two-legged goats and developmental variation
Upstream plasticity and downstream robustness in evolution of molecular networks
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« Should this student have been suspended? | Main | That holy flail »
Category: Organisms
Posted on: October 30, 2007 1:06 PM, by PZ Myers
If you are wondering who that little guy is on my shoulder, you need to be enlightened. Of course they're beautiful. I keep a model right next to my spring-loaded squid toy.
So you want a closeup?
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YES! Send me a free issue of Seed.
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Comments
"Say hello to my naked little friend!"
PZ stars in the remake of 'Scarface'.
Posted by: Janine | October 30, 2007 1:11 PM
I can barely see the little guy in that picture. Isn't that basically a tacit admission on your part that he's...ugly?
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 30, 2007 1:17 PM
I love Naked Mole Rats!...
My first week of my first year of college while standing in line for food I asked my roommate from which animal he thought the meat of the day originated. He replied, "Naked Mole Rat".
We laughed hysterically for about five minutes, and then off and on all day. I actually thought he just made it up. When I asked him what struck him to create such a concept, he said "It was the first thing I saw in my biology text". Apparently, he sat down with his first biology book and opened it to a random page. There eblazoned upon the top of the page was a blurb about the neat little colonial animal, the naked mole rat.
To this day, it is still something of a personal totem creature.
Thanks for that!
Posted by: Andy J | October 30, 2007 1:20 PM
They are absolutely adorable. I like them!
Posted by: denise | October 30, 2007 1:23 PM
Hmm. PZ's real name is Ron Stoppable? lol Seriously, most of you won't get that joke probably. I wouldn't either, but found myself awake late night with a lot of bad TV, and the only thing I could find to watch was "Kim Possible" on Disney. lol
Of course, the only problem with my theory is that Ron has super monkey powers, not super squid powers. ;)
Posted by: Kagehi | October 30, 2007 1:36 PM
Has anybody seen the Errol Morris film "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control"? It has naked mole rats in it.
Posted by: Vitis01 | October 30, 2007 1:43 PM
I despise the little critters as they are a bastardization of the two animals I hate the most- rats and moles. And they're hairless, so that's a triple whamy. Plus they wallow in the entire colonies fecal matter and eat their own poop. Don't let em lick you in the face! :)
Posted by: Deepsix | October 30, 2007 1:51 PM
Oh smokes! You can get these?
Not that I want one. I'm sure one of the cats would have it for lunch.
Posted by: Zeno Izen | October 30, 2007 1:58 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6scHgACSD0
Posted by: tacitus | October 30, 2007 2:00 PM
I was in the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo recently where they have a colony of naked mole rats with their burrow right up against the glass. So you can see the whole colony doing their mole-rattish things. Very cool.
Posted by: Umilik | October 30, 2007 2:01 PM
Ugly!
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 30, 2007 2:03 PM
Although he may superficially resemble Ron Stoppable, it should be obvious by now that PZ actually wants to be Dr. Drakken! (Besides, who wouldn't want Shego as a lab assistant? Rowr!)
Actually the only reason I know about this show is that I have a number of anime fan friends who go on about it.
Posted by: Rheinhard | October 30, 2007 2:05 PM
NMRs are fascinating mammals for many reasons; not just the whole eusocial thing, but they also have perhaps the lowest metabolic rates among mammals and are damn near ectothermic. Very weird indeed.
And, with an 11-yo daughter, I am quite familiar with Kim Possible (a pretty good female role model, as cartoon characters go), her friend Ron, and his pet NMR--"Rufus," if memory serves.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | October 30, 2007 2:07 PM
Hey, that's Rufus in the video linked from comment #8!
Rey Fox, you're trollin', dude.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | October 30, 2007 2:09 PM
I personally love naked mole rats. Not only have they gone so far beyond ugly* they've doubled back into Cute Overload territory, but they're the closest thing to a real-life Empire of the Ants. God deserves some sort of industry award for the Intelligent Design.
*Mind, I'd say there's no such thing as an ugly animal, only an interesting one.
Posted by: Master Mahan | October 30, 2007 2:11 PM
I got one of those little rubber guys at the MN Zoo a while ago, but it hadn't been home more than fifteen minutes when one of the cats decided it needed to be torn limb from limb.
So now I've got a legless bucktoothed sausage.
Still moderately awesome I guess.
Posted by: K. Signal Eingang | October 30, 2007 2:26 PM
It looks roughly like a walking penis with large teeth. Now that's
not a nice thing to think of.
Posted by: n | October 30, 2007 2:28 PM
I have a real one! http://jeffthefish.com/images/pi_rat/002.jpg
Well, it looks similar :-)
Posted by: Jason J Brunet | October 30, 2007 2:32 PM
They are cute! Don't have them either the real thing or fake.. but do have actual, live naked neck chickens(often AKA Turkens) which are just as cute!
Posted by: Geta | October 30, 2007 2:35 PM
Somebody got down on me recently for knowing the lyrics to the Thundercats theme song, so I'll carefully refrain from quoting the Kim Possible theme. :D
But Kim rocks. And so do Ron and Rufus.
Posted by: Hank Fox | October 30, 2007 2:38 PM
My 8-yr old daughter saw a special on these critters a while back on Animal Planet. They freaked her out big time, and she had nightmares about naked mole rats. The thing that scared her most was that they could chew through concrete. She figured (correctly, I would assume) that any creature capable of chewing through concrete would have no trouble chewing through an 8-yr old girl.
She still talks about them from time to time. If you ask her what the most dangerous animal in the world is, she'll tell you it's a naked mole rat.
Posted by: Heather | October 30, 2007 2:45 PM
I find it mind-blowing that some mammals, while not actually being haplodiploid, have managed to evolve the same social structure as bees. Apparently they share over 50% of their genes, and the eusociality followed, or went hand-in-hand with the inbreeding. Could some remote, inbred mountain community do the same thing? I seem to recall an old X-Files episode along those lines.
What actual haplodiploidy in an intelligent species would mean was explored brilliantly by James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) in Your Haploid Heart.
Posted by: jre | October 30, 2007 3:03 PM
Heh, I named my photobucket for the raging naked molerat.
Feisty creatures, they are.
(clicky my username above to see a nice pic)
Posted by: thomis | October 30, 2007 3:11 PM
And, with an 11-yo daughter, I am quite familiar with Kim Possible (a pretty good female role model, as cartoon characters go), her friend Ron, and his pet NMR--"Rufus," if memory serves.
I totally agree about the role model bit: I also have an 11-daughter, although I watch KP more than she does. KP is considerably brighter than Ron, but then so is Rufus.....
Posted by: Hairy Doctor Professor | October 30, 2007 3:17 PM
Hmm. PZ's real name is Ron Stoppable? lol Seriously, most of you won't get that joke probably. I wouldn't either, but found myself awake late night with a lot of bad TV, and the only thing I could find to watch was "Kim Possible" on Disney. lol
Of course, the only problem with my theory is that Ron has super monkey powers, not super squid powers. ;)
Posted by: Kagehi | October 30, 2007 1:36 PM
If you have the Disney Channel and elementary school kids, "Kim Possible" is actually a relatively good show. Much better than most of the crap on children's TV.
Posted by: Moses | October 30, 2007 3:23 PM
Not my day for tags... Messed up #24.
......
"Too many comments have been submitted from you in a short period of time. Please try again in a short while."
"Bite me" flood control.
Posted by: Moses | October 30, 2007 3:26 PM
My kids love Kim Possible, too. I watch it with them if I have time. And I love Rufus. He's the smartest of them all, I think.
Posted by: Dawn | October 30, 2007 3:47 PM
But but but that's a horrible vertebrate...
Posted by: Zarquon | October 30, 2007 4:14 PM
This video is a wonderful recruiting tool... for atheists.
This is the reason why belief in the existence of Hell is always considerably lower than belief in God (even in the US). The more Christians push this type of stuff on their kids, the more they will reject the faith of their fathers. It's already happening, and this type of thing will only accelerate the process.
Curiously, I have been working on a short story with a similar theme--a young person gets killed in a car crash and finds himself suffering almost indescribable torments in the Lake of Fire. The reveal at the end of the story is that he, and all the others around him are children barely beyond the "age of accountability" and are only guilty of things that a real parent would forgive in a heartbeat. Of course, it also turns out that Stalin repented on his deathbed (or maybe Hilter, I haven't decided yet) and is enjoying an eternity in Heaven while the kids all languish in torment.
Such is the logic of fundamentalist Christianity.
Posted by: tacitus | October 30, 2007 4:23 PM
Oops - how the heck did that happen?
Sorry, wrong thread!!
LOL!
Posted by: tacitus | October 30, 2007 4:25 PM
Naked mole rats are the best proof that God exists--no creature could possibly be so ugly without having been on the wrong end of divine wrath.
Posted by: Skemono | October 30, 2007 4:34 PM
We all trollin' all up in here!
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 30, 2007 4:38 PM
i'z on ur blog, waytun 4 naked LOLrat jokz
Posted by: skyotter | October 30, 2007 5:06 PM
Spring loaded squid toy?? Please, oh please, tell me such a thing exists! :D
Posted by: ichthyes | October 30, 2007 5:15 PM
At first I though, "Oh neat! PZ's got a fake naked mole rat."
Then I realized, "Who would make a fake naked mole rat?"
Needless to say, this latest epiphany finds me embarcing the stark realization that you, sir, have some very odd pets.
Cute little bugger, though. And, that's a nice, smart, young man haircut you've got there Dr. Myers.
Posted by: Dan | October 30, 2007 5:22 PM
I admit that pictured next to you, they don't look quite so ugly.
Posted by: dc | October 30, 2007 5:26 PM
The big boys told me that haplodiploidy has lost favor as "the" explanation for eusociality. Termites are diploid, too.
Posted by: windy | October 30, 2007 5:37 PM
How old is everyone here? I make a joke about PZ being Al Pacino. 'chirp' 'chirp' Someone makes a joke about some Disney(?) cartoon and people are falling over themselves. If you are going to use a cartoon, at least let is be something as funny as 'The Tick'.
Posted by: Janine | October 30, 2007 6:25 PM
Spoooooooon!
PZ? Why are my comments being moderated? Have I caught The Dumb? I promise I will not pass it on to anyone.
Posted by: Dan | October 30, 2007 6:32 PM
I was just into the small mammal house at the DC zoo, where they have a colony you can watch... tho' a screaming two year old sorta cut the experience short. It was sorta: oh, look... eusocial mammals... and there they go, while I deal with a much larger, more antisocial specimen.
Posted by: AJ Milne | October 30, 2007 6:37 PM
It looks roughly like a walking penis with large teeth. Now that's not a nice thing to think of.
Teeth - they're not just for vaginas anymore.
Posted by: windy | October 30, 2007 7:22 PM
ALL HAIL THE NAKED MOLE RAT!!!!!!!!!!!
(sorry, not shouting, just jubilant)
Posted by: lithopithecus | October 30, 2007 7:32 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_UDTzG-6Qo
and thanks for the Pharyngulanche ;-)
Posted by: Coturnix | October 30, 2007 8:27 PM
Naked mole rats are ugly. They're fascinating and wonderful, but they're bug ugly. Now, Damaraland mole rats, those are cute.
Posted by: Mike from Ottawa | October 30, 2007 8:29 PM
That doesn't look particularly naked to me.
Oh ...
The little one ...
Actually, they don't seem too bad , but I think I prefer moles and rats rather than that hodgepodge.
Posted by: Sili | October 30, 2007 9:54 PM
No doubt the references to dear KP on this thread will lead to this blog getting a whole bunch of new visitors.
Posted by: tim gueguen | October 30, 2007 9:59 PM
Oh my, I believe I have that exact model (along with two other far-less-lifelike NMR toys). Mine is from the Toronto Zoo, which has a collection of the adorable little critters. I too see them as a totem of mine.
I have always thought that a glass "naked mole rat farm", like an ant farm but with NMRs, would make a great conversation piece. The only downside would be the size...
Posted by: Tulse | October 30, 2007 10:30 PM
Ron Stoppable is not stupid, Ron stoppable suffers from a lack of confidence. He is Jewish, a bit of a nerd, and the insecure son of highly competent parents. Naturally he got picked on when he was younger. Kim Possible is the first real friend he's ever had. The first person who accepted him for himself, and possibly the first non-Jew to accept his faith as a matter of course.
PZ's friend? It's a miniature gorgonopsid. Only a gorgonopsid would be too stupid to protest being posed like that, with its front paws sort of off PZ's knuckles.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | October 30, 2007 10:38 PM
#6-
Has anybody seen the Errol Morris film "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control"?
I thought it was brilliant, both the cinematography style and the soundtrack. Though I preferred the topiary animals to the naked mole rats running through the habi-burrow. Errol Morris is a filmmaking genius.
Posted by: Barn Owl | October 30, 2007 10:40 PM
I wonder how many zoos have colonies of these critters. Adde the Philadelphia Zoo to the list.
Posted by: Heather Kuhn | October 30, 2007 11:23 PM
Oh, naked mole rats... how peculiar creatures yet so cute and ugly at the same time. My zoology techer loves to mention them, I wonder why he chose bees instead of n.mole rats.
Posted by: AleieX | October 30, 2007 11:55 PM
Not that I'm a Trekkie, but doesn't PZ like a young William Riker? Star Trek TNG The Prequel, anyone? The mole rat could co-star as an alien ambassador.
Posted by: JM | October 31, 2007 5:02 AM
look like a young William Riker of course - apologies for the accidental omission.
Posted by: JM | October 31, 2007 5:04 AM
Invented a Naked Mole Rat cardgame once. Spaghetti junction, the object being to create and seal off a tunnel network containing one queen and one turnip, before the snake card turns up. Meanwhile, your opponents are building their Network, and trying to screw over yours.
Worked as solitaire, too. Also as Java, but that's still in production.
Posted by: Drhoz! | October 31, 2007 5:55 AM
@JM- Riker was my first thought, too!
Except Riker didn't get the beard until later, about the same time he started wearing a girdle.
Posted by: Apikoros | October 31, 2007 10:56 AM
"I have always thought that a glass "naked mole rat farm", like an ant farm but with NMRs, would make a great conversation piece. The only downside would be the size..."
the only downside? um...the smell?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | October 31, 2007 11:29 AM
"Adde the Philadelphia Zoo to the list. "
And the Oregon Zoo.
Posted by: Rey Fox | October 31, 2007 11:55 AM
A couple of years ago, a friend sent a picture of a naked mole rat and opined, "How would you like to go through life looking like a penis with teeth?"
Can't. Erase. Mental. Image.
-- CV
Posted by: CortxVortx | October 31, 2007 1:29 PM
Forget the rat, PZ looks like the living dead. Get some sleep, man! Or are you dressing up as a zombie for Halloween?
Posted by: marc | October 31, 2007 2:12 PM
#51 I wonder why he chose bees instead of n.mole rats.
Maybe nobody was studying them. They were only discovered 100 years ago, and they live underground in the Horn of Africa. Might have been daunting back in the day.
I'm reminded of those who didn't study geology back in the 60s because the academic side of the discipline was still ruled by the dead hand of uniformitarianism. While they'd accepted continental drift, it was important during the Cold War that they not give in to a revolutionary hypothesis like plate tectonics as the first mover.
Posted by: Goldrush | November 1, 2007 11:02 AM
I bought one of these a year or two ago at the Brookfield Zoo, which also has a colony. My only complaint is that it's too cute. It needs to have smaller eyes, the lower teeth need to be bigger, and there aren't enough wrinkles. Fuglify it, Platte River Trading! Well, make them look as good as nature intended them to be. ;^)
Posted by: Mena | November 1, 2007 3:37 PM
I seem to recall a Naked Mole Rat Rap being put out by the Kim Possible franchise awhile back...
I'm a 36 year old male, and yes, I will sit through an episode of Kim Possible and enjoy it. For an animated chick, she's hot ;-)
And Ron & Rufus are pretty good comic relief.
Posted by: JJR | November 2, 2007 10:43 PM