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« We're doomed. It's another sign of the apocalypse. | Main | The cameraman speaks »
Mary's Monday Metazoan: What's pink and tubular?
Category: Organisms
Posted on: November 9, 2009 8:39 AM, by PZ Myers
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Comments
Posted by: faithless | November 9, 2009 8:42 AM
Naked mole rats!
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 9, 2009 8:42 AM
mmmmmmmmmm toothy sausages
Posted by: Carlie | November 9, 2009 8:44 AM
Yea naked mole-rats! The one mammal where siblings are routinely much more closely related than parents to children, thanks to all the inbreeding. Kin altruism FTW.
Posted by: Hank Fox | November 9, 2009 8:58 AM
Brings to mind the Kim Possible theme song.
(For those not in the know, Kim's sidekick Ron Stoppable has a naked mole rat, Rufus, for a pet. Never ask how I know that.)
Posted by: True Bob | November 9, 2009 9:00 AM
They are one of our family's favorites at the National Zoo. They are ridiculous - crawling over each other, pulling each other back by clamping on the other's tail, shoving each other back with their hind paws. It's like they don't care if they get anywhere, as long as they can push, pull, and shove.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | November 9, 2009 9:11 AM
there are uglier mammals around than naked mole rats. but not many, and not by much.
Posted by: Anon | November 9, 2009 9:18 AM
Now, why on earth should that photo remind me of my hemorrhoid surgery?
Posted by: Jim A. | November 9, 2009 9:19 AM
I have to say, I was disapointed when I discoverd that Rufus displays pretty much no naked mole rat behaviors. I've had an interest in naked mole rats since I read an article on them in newscientist in the early 80s.
Posted by: Notagod | November 9, 2009 9:25 AM
Its a jessssusss between the two front teeth. Now there is christian proof that jesus is a pushy, pulley, shovey rat.
Posted by: JJR | November 9, 2009 9:25 AM
RUFUS!
(I got hooked on Kim Possible when I had to help my then wife babysit her younger male cousin who was in elementary school at the time. It was one of his favorite shows.
I've even watched some of the Kim Possible movies on DVD.)
Posted by: Hank Fox | November 9, 2009 9:26 AM
All those horror movies in the 50s and 60s that found ways to make ordinary thingies into monsters by enlarging them -- ants, shrews, spiders, women -- why did nobody think of naked mole rats? I guess they would have been just too ridiculous.
"Mildred, look! Giant naked mole rats! Eating people!"
"Perhaps we should run, Sheldon!"
"No, look! Naked mole rats! I mean, they're 30 feet tall and they're eating people, but ... fucking NAKED MOLE RATS! Where's my cellphone camera? These things are fantastic!"
Posted by: SEF | November 9, 2009 9:29 AM
More balloon animals? ;-)
Posted by: Dídac | November 9, 2009 9:33 AM
I find Mary's Monday Metazoan too much biased in favour of Bilateria. All five major taxa of Metazoa deserve an equal treatment: Porifera, Placozoa, Ctenophora, Cnidaria and Bilateria.
Posted by: Robert Donovan | November 9, 2009 9:49 AM
Here you go Dídac
Posted by: Tulse | November 9, 2009 9:50 AM
NMRs are my totem animal. I want to create a giant naked mole rat farm -- like an ant farm, but with naked mole rats. One wall in the house with a double-pane of glass, filled with dirt and naked mole rats. That would be truly awesome (impractical, but awesome).
Posted by: Ephemeriis | November 9, 2009 9:56 AM
Those things creep me out.
Posted by: Kurt | November 9, 2009 9:56 AM
Feed them right and put them in the Fire Swamp and they become R.O.U.S.
- Kurt
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | November 9, 2009 10:05 AM
Tulse, I think your set-up is what the National Zoo in DC has for its naked mole rat display. One of the stories in Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (a true geek movie) is the guy who designed the thing.
And fuckit but they're ugly. If I looked like that I'd stay underground too.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | November 9, 2009 10:11 AM
Rereading the headline, I'd suggest that what we have here is a Mexican* standoff with vagina dentata.
*Call it a geographic as opposed to ethnic descriptor.
Posted by: Hank Fox | November 9, 2009 10:11 AM
Tulse: #15 "NMRs are my totem animal."
You couldn't have gone with, like, you know, wolves or something? Elephants? Even red-winged blackbirds?
I just don't see naked mole rats being all that well-connected in the Spirit World.
I mean, when the other Spirit-Gods gather for a party, I'm just imagining Naked Mole Rat showing up and hearing "Gods, it's him again." "Whoops, I have to rush off and burn some pagans." "It's the 2nd Millennium, for Bear's sake. I mean, HELLO. All I'm saying is, grow some fur."
Posted by: dNorrisM | November 9, 2009 10:13 AM
And they are apparently immune to cancer.
Posted by: bobxxxx | November 9, 2009 10:14 AM
Every day I learn something new here. I never heard of mole rats before.
Totally off-topic: This is what Idiot America needs and what England now has:
It's a great birthday present for Darwin in his 200th anniversary year. For the first time, evolution will be on the national curriculum for primary schools when the new version is published later this year.
Posted by: Darren Garrison | November 9, 2009 10:19 AM
http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2009/11/happy_belated_mole_day.php
(Linked because I like the drawing.)
Posted by: Dave Dell | November 9, 2009 10:20 AM
Bad Pickup Line #876: I've got your naked mole rat for 'ya right here!
Posted by: murgadroid | November 9, 2009 10:23 AM
Anyone else notice that they're just the right size and shape to fit the human hand . . . kind of like a banana! Eeeeeeew!
Posted by: Gryllus | November 9, 2009 10:29 AM
The naked mole rat - described (with affection) by someone who worked on them as looking like 'penises with teeth'. If they do creep you out a bit there is always the Damaraland mole rat - also eusocial but furry and less... well, penile.
Posted by: Peter Ashby | November 9, 2009 10:41 AM
Take any normally hairy animal and denude it and they will look ugly. I bet naked humans look ugly to most other animals, especially the other great apes. We probably escape this judgement through wearing clothes. Nude mice for eg are far from cute, but they are just normal mice with no hair.
Yes I do find mice cute. Makes it slightly harder to work with them mind, but not too much. It just motivates you to get good at sacrificing them as humanely as you can. Rats are cute too, lab rats that is. They tend not to want to bite you for one thing. They are also curious creatures and can be affectionate. I'd probably have a pet rat if my wife were not allergic, to most hairy creatures (fortunately I am not particularly hirsute).
Posted by: Tulse | November 9, 2009 10:51 AM
That may be, but because they're not popular they're not nearly as overloaded with spirit requests as wolves and eagles and horses. You get more personalized attention from a naked mole rat totem.
I don't want the Habitrail-y setup that they have (we have a similar arrangement at the Toronto Zoo) -- I want an actual large dirt-filled panel they can dig in, as they would in the wild, but large enough to house a reasonable colony. (I really don't understand my spouse's objection to this...)
I suppose in a pinch a collection of plastic tubes and boxes would do.
(To be serious, I would think that NMRs might make pretty good small mammal pets, as they seem more interesting than the standard hamsters and gerbils, and live about 10 times as long. But I suppose different folks have different aesthetic senses.)
Posted by: Luis Daniel | November 9, 2009 10:59 AM
#8 Curiously, when I tried to explain to someone why naked mole rats can't be good pets as Rufus, I argued:
-NMR need to eat continuously due its metabolic needs (Rufus is always eating hypercaloric foods)
-NMR are subterranean desert creatures that need claustrophobic, dark and hot places to live (Rufus lives in Ron's trousers pocket)
-NMR are eusocial soldiers totally dedicated to his queen (maybe this will lead to a very faithful pet?)
Ummm...
Posted by: Glen Davidson
|
November 9, 2009 10:59 AM
Course they're commies, being eusocial and all that.
But I wouldn't want to put anything except machines up against them for tunnel-building.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | November 9, 2009 11:00 AM
hmmm...
Depending on to whom you are talking, a case could be made for up to 3 different "major taxa" of sponges, and recently a combined cnidarian + ctenophore = coelenterate clade has been reconstructed. But those deep branches are a bitch.
Posted by: True Bob | November 9, 2009 11:03 AM
Despite their apparently nasty, big pointy teeth, they still have nothing on The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. Where's a Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch when you need one?
Posted by: Ray | November 9, 2009 11:20 AM
But think of all the Zemmiphobes!
Posted by: Insightful Ape
|
November 9, 2009 11:22 AM
Where they on the Ark?
Posted by: Kim Hosey (AZ Writer) | November 9, 2009 11:39 AM
Suddenly, I feel much better about my overbite.
(I've had a fair share of exposure to Kim Possible and Rufus as well, thanks to my son. There's even a naked mole rat music video they do on the show, I seem to remember.)
Posted by: Hank Fox | November 9, 2009 11:54 AM
Naked mole rats -- an untapped marketing bonanza!
"Imagine if you were a naked mole rat and suffered from scaly, irritated skin. But scientists know naked mole rats NEVER suffer from skin irritation. And now we bring you the secret of mole rat skin, with new Mole Rat Balm. Soft supple skin ... for when you really want to burrow."
Posted by: Rey Fox | November 9, 2009 12:21 PM
They're NAKED!
And they're MOLE RATS
Posted by: daveau
|
November 9, 2009 12:22 PM
I see what you did there...
Posted by: Sili
|
November 9, 2009 12:57 PM
Admittedly Kim Possible came at the tailend of my cartoonwatching years, but I'm surprised at myself that I've never noticed this innuendo before. I'm ashamed of my insufficiently dirty mind.
Posted by: Happy Tentacles | November 9, 2009 1:10 PM
Did anyone saw 'Merlin' on BBC1 a few weeks ago? The episode involved giant man-eating Naked Mole Rats, kept in tunnels by an evil warlord to consume his enemies. I can't remember much about what happened in the rest of the programme, but the Mole Rats were fun, in a freaky sort of way.
Posted by: Masks of Eris | November 9, 2009 1:22 PM
I swear I will some day have one as a pet. (Come to think of that, possibly I'll take it out for walks on a leash. And should my academic plans succeed, to sit and hiss and slobber on a table while I lecture. "So, does anyone know if this function is continuous? No? How about you, Nakey? Do you? Oh yes you do --- yes it is. Now, young ones, bested by a naked mole rat once again --- I'd try harder if I were you.")
You got to have plans and ambitions, you know.
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 9, 2009 1:47 PM
But scientists know naked mole rats NEVER suffer from skin irritation. - Hank Fox
This may be because they anoint themselves with their nest-mates' waste products...
I think I'd prefer the skin irritation.
Posted by: Tulse | November 9, 2009 2:06 PM
And yet many skin creams have urea in them and other things. At least the NMRs are up front about it...
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 9, 2009 2:16 PM
Damn, I didn't realize these little buggers can live to be 28 years old.
Posted by: sasqwatch | November 9, 2009 4:06 PM
No it's not.
It's an Antarctic hot-headed naked ice-borer. [original article text]
From the article: A pack of ice borers will cluster under a penguin and melt the ice and snow it's standing on. When the hapless bird sinks into the slush, the ice borers attack, dispatching it with bites of their sharp incisors. They then carve it up and carry its flesh back to their burrows, leaving behind only webbed feet, a beak, and some feathers. "They travel through the ice at surprisingly high speeds, " says Pazzo, "much faster than a penguin can waddle.
(anybody else remember when this "article" came out?)
Posted by: Angela | November 9, 2009 4:25 PM
When life gets you down, just remember "At least you dont look like a dick with bad teeth."
Posted by: Diego | November 9, 2009 7:00 PM
Hurray for naked mole rats!
Posted by: Meathead | November 9, 2009 7:03 PM
NMRs are amazing! Can live up to 30 years (for a creature that size, that's mind blowing) and have a whole secondary defense against cancer that nothing else has. No one has ever found a tumor in one.
Posted by: mythusmage
|
November 9, 2009 7:41 PM
#45
Not really, but I'm sure it was an April issue.
Posted by: Hank Fox | November 9, 2009 7:55 PM
Sasquatch #45: "It's an Antarctic hot-headed naked ice-borer."
Color me one of the possibly few who never completely trusted Discover Magazine after that story.
I mean, here were all these anti-science idiots in the world whacking away at the roots of real knowledge, and then there was Discover Magazine, somebody I thought was on MY team, somebody passionate about conveying the latest discoveries in science.
And here was this wonder-inspiring story. Mysterious little mammals that lived in the Arctic ice, and attacked penguins for food. Amazing! How could it be possible? I couldn't wait to find out more.
But the "more" turned out to be the fact that some dimwitted clown at Discover thought "Hey, let's do something really funny for April Fool's Day -- let's make our readers feel like chumps! You know, fuck over their trust. Destroy their sense of wonder, just for this one month. It'll be a real hoot!"
I still don't bother to read it.
Posted by: Colonel Molerat | November 9, 2009 8:22 PM
Hurrah! What a fine day to get my internet working again!
Posted by: Blair | November 9, 2009 9:58 PM
Why do those little buggers remind me of Ken Ham? 'Cause he's in the dark too....?
Posted by: StanDahl
|
November 10, 2009 12:26 AM
Saber-tooth Sausages!
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 10, 2009 5:39 AM
When life gets you down, just remember "At least you dont look like a dick with bad teeth." - Angela
How do you know? I'm a Brit, remember!
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 10, 2009 6:02 AM
That naked mole rats live so long is presumably a consequence of a very low risk of predation: very difficult to get at, nasty teeth, collective defence - and would you want to eat one? Hence the balance of benefits from putting resources into reproducing early, or delaying senescence, shifts toward the latter.
Posted by: Tulse | November 10, 2009 11:47 AM
Their lifespan is several times that of gophers, shrews, meerkats, and other similarly sized burrowing mammals. There really does seem to be something unique biologically about them.