Naked mole rats look like tiny, wrinkly hot dogs with buck teeth. They live in big underground colonies in East Africa, ruled by a single queen who is the only female that breeds. So far, so weird. It gets weirder.
A regular rat lives 2 or 3 years. A naked mole rat can live more than 30 - fifteen times longer - and almost never gets cancer. Scientists are still trying to figure out how. Their cells seem to have extra anti-cancer tricks and they barely age, staying just as healthy at 25 as they were at 5.
They also survive in air so low on oxygen that any other mammal would pass out, by basically switching their bodies over to running on plant sugar instead. And because their underground burrows fill with stinging acid from old carbon dioxide, they’ve evolved to feel no pain from acid at all.
