Talk:Naked mole-rat

message: What a weird little creature.  Any word on why they don't have any hair like other mammals? — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:11, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)
They have hair.  It's just fine and sparse.  Concentrated on their heads, base of tail, and between toes.
True. Dora Nichov 03:28, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Interesting

message: I've been able to find surprisingly little info on naked mole rat diet. What do they eat underground out in the African desert? I'm assuming probably insects, but has their natural diet been ascertained? --Bk0 (Talk) 02:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diet? 

message: It looks better on kim possible.lolPeace, Cute 1 4 u 07:23, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Image

message: I don't think the redirection from Sand Rat to this page is right. Sand Rat is from genus Psammomys and species obesus, which is different from the animal mentioned in this page.
:I would agree, sand rats are usually gerbillines.  --Aranae 17:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sand Rat ? 

message: The article defines them as being "nearly cold blooded" and "virtually cold blooded" but makes no effort to distinguish the differences between them and the cold blooded of say a reptile. What is the purpose behind the "nearly" and "virtually" qualifiers? I'm actually very interested in knowing how they're not really cold blooded, or if they really are. I personally thought they were and if they're not really, it would be nice to know the details of why or why not.
:Ditto. Does that mean they can change their own temperature a -little-? Does it mean their temperature behaves like an ectotherm but has the function and physiological characteristics of an endotherm?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.63.142 (talk) 19:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. We had this conversation tonight. I proposed that humans exhibit similar behaviour when it comes to regulating body temperature (cuddling close for warmth, burrowing (going indoors), etc. The one thing I am unsure of is if human metabolism can be regulated to provide proper temperature over separate conditions. Wrxahedron (talk) 08:25, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virtually Cold Blooded 

message: I heard on a nature channel that the queen mole rat can extend her spine once she becomes queen to become larger than the other rats. is this true? If so, should it be added to the article? Sliver Slave (talk) 00:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extenable spine 

message: Below is a copy of the original request/response, located here).
If you people are as annoyed as I am at the chronic vandalism that this article suffers, please feel free to weigh in at the above location, or to make a new request here.   --Wormcast (talk) 22:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Declined – Not enough recent disruptive activity to justify protection. That one protection back in 2007 was the only protection ever, and from looking at the whole history out of curiosity was one of the only sustained bursts (in a day or two) of vandalism ever. The last total 100 edits go all the way back to October 2008, and it's as of now only been edited 12 times total from February 1-13. rootology (C)(T) 05:54, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Out of the last 100 edits you cited, no less than 56 were either vandalism or reverts/repairs due to vandalism. This high level is deleterious to the health of the article - it is often hard to see when the last true edit was made. The article is relatively stable, other than this activity. I fail to understand why it is significant in the case of a request for indefinite semi-protection, for the vandalism to be concentrated in a short time period. Such a pattern would only be relevant if I were requesting temporary semi-protection; where the hope would be that a particular vandal or group of vandals would grow bored, or that tempers would subside. Wormcast (talk) 17:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Now 64/100...Wormcast (talk) 22:39, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Now 65/100...Wormcast (talk) 11:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

text: Now 70/100...Wormcast (talk) 04:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for protection discussion 

message: Indefinite semi-protect. Chronic, frequent IP vandalism. Note: temporary semi-protection has been tried , and had no lasting deterrent effect. This is not some particular grudge or disgruntled editor(s); the title of the article just attracts the immature. At this point, the bulk of the work done on the article is more or less reverting vandalism.  Wormcast (talk) 05:34, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Declined – Not enough recent disruptive activity to justify protection. That one protection back in 2007 was the only protection ever, and from looking at the whole history out of curiosity was one of the only sustained bursts (in a day or two) of vandalism ever. The last total 100 edits go all the way back to October 2008, and it's as of now only been edited 12 times total from February 1-13. rootology (C)(T) 05:54, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Out of the last 100 edits you cited, no less than 56 were either vandalism or reverts/repairs due to vandalism. This high level is deleterious to the health of the article - it is often hard to see when the last true edit was made. The article is relatively stable, other than this activity. I fail to understand why it is significant in the case of a request for indefinite semi-protection, for the vandalism to be concentrated in a short time period. Such a pattern would only be relevant if I were requesting temporary semi-protection; where the hope would be that a particular vandal or group of vandals would grow bored, or that tempers would subside. Wormcast (talk) 17:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Now 64/100...Wormcast (talk) 22:39, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Now 65/100...Wormcast (talk) 11:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

text: Now 70/100...Wormcast (talk) 04:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: {{la|Naked mole rat}}

message: Naked Mole Rats May Hold Clues to Successful Aging. newswise.com ( UT Science Center at San Antonio. 04-Mar-2009 ) nennt Viviana Perez (fellow at the Barshop Institute), Asish Chaudhuri and Co-author Rochelle Buffenstein (professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute):
* Protein stability and resistance to oxidative stress are determinants of longevity in the longest-living rodent, the naked mole rat; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 3, 2009; Viviana Perez, Rochelle Buffenstein, Venkata Masamsetti, Shanique Leonard, Adam Salmon, James Mele, Blazej Andziak, Ting Yang, Yael Edrey, Bertrand Friguet, Walter Ward, Arlan Richardson, Asish Chaudhuri.  
-- aaaah (post ?), 93.196.75.38 16:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  longevity 

message: The article currently says, "This eusocial organisation social structure, similar to that found in ants, termites, and some bees and wasps, is very rare among mammals." Continue the thought: It is not found at all among non-mammalian vertabrates. Might also point out there are species in the genus Synalpheus that are eusocial (according to the book Superorganism).
Then again, eusociality is very rare, period -- there aren't that many insect species that are eusocial, and no arachnids or crustaceans are.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.50.234.152 (talk) 04:59, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social Structure 

message: Why is it nowhere mentioned that there is also parthenogenesis among mole rats?--80.141.181.67 (talk) 15:18, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it doesn't happen.  Do you have a citation?  --Aranae (talk) 22:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reproduction 

message: Why was this version reverted?  I thought it was a very nice, yet simple explanation for this significant recent research.  The article should have more of this kind of content, not less.  --Aranae (talk) 22:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and went ahead and reinstated the deleted content. It did need some stylistic improvement, so I edited the text. I also placed it in a separate section, because the cancer prevention mechanism, although related to longevity, is really a separate topic. Ucucha 22:57, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Genetics of longevity

message: Should it be mentioned that a naked mole rat is a character in the children's animated show Kim Possible?  --69.169.163.169 (talk) 05:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Wormcast (talk) 05:52, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Any particular reason against a pop culture section? It's one of the main characters in that well-known American cartoon. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs)  02:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I too am really curious as to why they won't allow Rufus to be mentioned on this page. I personally have added this reference twice, but it was removed on both occasions. After all, it's a popular cartoon series and the Naked Mole Rat (Rufus) is one of the main characters. Strange! Torspedia (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

text: Mole rats are also featured in the Fallout series (video game). Maybe it could be mentionned too?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.80.130 (talk) 01:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pop culture 

message: The following is text I removed from the vitamin D article that may be better incorporated here. Interestingly, the naked mole rat is resistant to aging, never gets cancer, maintains healthy vascular function and is the longest lived of all rodents.  
Yobol (talk) 17:26, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Material from [[Vitamin D]] 

message: What are some common causes of death among NMRs other than injuries/starvation/etc? Everything Is Numbers (talk) 11:07, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, and I'm sorry for minifying the impressiveness of this fact! But I'm just thinking: cancer has never been observed in them, and they're very good at keeping their cardiovascular system healthy—these two are the main factors of mortality in the developed world—so what's left? They have a maximum lifespan, which means that there has to be something that kills them eventually, so what is it? Everything Is Numbers (talk) 08:46, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seeing that these creatures are so resistant to diseases, why is their lifespan limited to 28yr? 

message: This is a really minor point, but here goes...  Should mole rat have a hyphen (mole-rat) or not?  The article uses "mole rat" but many of the references use "mole-rat".  I think I have too much time on my hands!__DrChrissy (talk) 19:56, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hyphen or not 

message: In his 1938 short story Hyperpilosity, L. Sprague de Camp referred to "a pair of East African sand rats — Heterocephalus — hideous-looking things". Has that name been used anywhere else, and should we include it in the article? DS (talk) 18:21, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate name? 

message: 1. I'm not finding where the larger Naked Mole Rats actually guard the nest. Possibly cite or change to something more accurate
2. Possibly provide some information on research that has been done to determine the eusocial characteristics in mole rats
3. Also change the females are temporarily sterile to something along the lines that most females will most likely never breed and that their ovaries appear to be unactive
Strite.2 (talk) 18:24, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestions to Page in Ecology and Behavior Section

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: Should there be an in popular culture section? Naked mole rats prominently feature in the TV show Kim Possible. Bobbbcat (talk) 00:31, 15 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Irrelevant. -- Alexf(talk) 11:32, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  In popular culture 

message: Just to add that the mole-rat's lifespan is ten times longer than that of an ordinary rat or mouse (see section "Longevity"). Thank you 176.147.224.55 (talk) 10:44, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The section on longevity already says they live 32 years (with source). You request to say 10 times. Do you have a source for that? -- Alexf(talk) 11:32, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: This one for example for the Norway rat. That's roughly one-tenth of the naked mole-rat lifespan. 176.147.224.55 (talk) 14:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  edit request 

message: Just to add that the mole-rat's lifespan (section "Longevity") is ten times longer than that of an ordinary rat or mouse one example of a source, for the Norway rat). Thank you 176.147.224.55 (talk) 08:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit Request 

message: This article says that the naked mole-rat belongs to the family “Heterocephalidae”. According to itis.gov Heterocephalinae is the subfamily that the naked mole-rat belongs in. The family that it belongs in is Bathyergidae. The “Rodent” page in Wikipedia also does not list “Heterocephalidae” as a family in the “Classification and evolution” section. I am pretty sure the ITIS page is reliable. Can the admins (or whoever can edit this page) change this?
Links: 
Wikipedia “Rodents” page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodent
itis.gov “Standart Report Page: Heterocephalus glaber(the naked mole-rat)” Ilh758 (talk) 16:07, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taxonomy 

message: (Edited in steps, because Mobile "add discussion" did not work and lost my text.)
According to source [64], dispensers migrate to other colonies and are maybe accepted as breeders from the existing queen. So this dispensers are male.
According to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200227122113.htm, dispensers found new colonies ("naked mole rats disperse -- or leave their underground colony to mate with an outsider and form a new colony -- by migrating above ground."). So this dispensers must be female and maybe male ones. (There is nothing written who starts building the new colony, male or female or both.)
So, what do dispensers do after leaving the birth colony?
Also according to source [64], "New colonies are assumed to form by fission of existing groups ...". New sources about how new colonies are founded would be interesting.
Simohe (talk) 10:26, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dispensers, new colonies 

message: The photo in the infobox makes it seem as though naked mole-rats had no eyes at all. If it were up to me, I'd put one of the photos from further below in the article, showing the eyes, as the infobox photo. --92.209.47.17 (talk) 00:00, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox photo sucks 

message: Hello, I'd like to inform you that the longest lifespan for a rodent mentioned on this page has been surpassed according to more recent sources in the page for the Porcupinehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcupine#Longevity.
Cheers and have a good one.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apocryphor (talk • contribs) 13:01, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Longest life span for a rodent surpassed 

message: It is claimed that the naked mole-rat is closely related to the Damaraland mole-rat species. However, according to the taxonomy on this page, these species don’t belong to the same family nor superfamily. It appears that these species do belong the same parvorder though. But, as two animal species that are so distantly related to each other, describing them as “closely-related” seems incorrect. 
Instead, it should probably be replaced to “distantly-related”, or the term “closely-related” should simply be removed altogether.
I’d imagine that there’s already commonly confusion about the evolutionary relationship of the two species, due to them both being called “mole-rats”. So, this correction might help slightly. 2001:1C00:161C:9D00:695C:80B0:C796:C5AB (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship to other mole-rat species 

message: I suggest the parenthetical in the "Longevity section be changed from "(up to 32 years[16][36])" to "(up to 32 years and older [16][36])".
Reference 36 is clear that of the naked mole rats present in the 30 year study, over 60% were still alive after it's conclusion. This quote is from the same source: "This survival estimate suggested the naked mole-rat maximal lifespan to be far longer than the current 30 year published record (Lewis and Buffenstein, 2016; Buffenstein, 2008)."
Reference 36: https://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Heterocephalus_glaber Zxerxiz (talk) 04:44, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: . I didn't see anything in ref 36 indicating 60% survivability past 30 years, but I located a more recent source which puts the max lifespan in excess of 37 years. The modified text now reads:  Xan747 (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 1 August 2023 

message: Please find a citation for " Symbiotic bacteria in their intestines ferment the fibres, allowing otherwise indigestible cellulose to be turned into volatile fatty acids." Much appreciated. Zanrahan (talk) 09:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: but the ref needs more attention Maproom (talk) 16:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 13 November 2023