naked mole rat

Stuff we should click on.  Be sure to state Not Work Safe, if applicable.  KTHX.
Post Reply
Malcolm
Posts: 32040
Joined: Fri May 21, 2004 1:04 pm
Location: Minneapolis

naked mole rat

Post by Malcolm »

Would do good in Fallout.
And now the latest twist in the can-you-believe-what-naked-mole-rats-do story is that the animals can survive for 18 minutes with no oxygen. None.

They can live for at least five hours in an atmosphere that is only 5 percent oxygen (the normal level is about 20 percent). Mice last about a minute with no oxygen and about 15 minutes in 5 percent oxygen.
In spite of looking like a scrotum of an over-the-hill porno star, they also hit the evolutionary jackpot.
Until recently scientists thought they never got cancer. Then two mole rats in a lab were found to have it. Still, there are a lot of mole rats in the world and only two known to have cancer.
...
But mole rats can switch to a different kind of biochemical process that uses fructose — the sugar found in fruit and high fructose corn syrup — and that doesn’t need oxygen at all.
That'd be in lieu of glucose. Usually plants use fructose.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Post Reply