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Adorable naked mole rat snacking on fruit

Mark Frauenfelder at 5:16 pm Thu, Jul 14, 2011

Kindle

201107141712

"Daddy, can I have one?" (Via Discover)

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Ltshears

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Boomer

Somehow the cuddle factor of an animal which practices coprophagia with their young doesn’t register on my “awwwh” meter; however, they do bring to mind some rather interesting political analogies to the current front runners of God’s On Party.
- Anonymous
  
  Rabbits practice coprophagia, and a lot of people think they’re pretty cute. It turns out poop from some animals isn’t as bad as ours.
- irksome
  
  I was going to mention its remarkable resemblance to Rupert Murdoch but then I read your comment and realized it IS Rupert Murdoch.
- igpajo
  
  Mother dogs do this as well. My mom raised Shetland Sheepdogs when I was growing up and I got to experience the raising of 4 litters of puppies. It was pretty common for the Mama dog to eat the puppy poop. Pretty disgusting, granted, and I have to say I don’t think I let mama dog lick my face ever again, but apparently it’s pretty common behavior and is meant to keep the “nest” clean for the pups.
  (see this article which talks about why mother dogs do it: http://pethealthlibrary.purinacare.com/articles/dogs-articles/coprophagia/)
yvetteu

I love watching the naked mole rats at the Cincinnati Zoo. They’re in the Insect House, explained in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voSpOKFkYMc
Boomer

Ooops! Typo alert. G.O.P, = God’s Own Party.
MrJM

Mark Frauenfelder: Your baby is adorable.

Mother: You son of a bitch!
querent

I like naked mole rats the way I like those tumors doctors remove that contain teeth and hair and clusters of poorly formed vessels.

I like these things in the sense that I cannot stop thinking about them. I’m not good at parties.
cjp

That’s it. I am now officially a full-on, industrial strength lesbian. Please put that away.
Rob Gehrke

Beauty is in the [skin-covered] eye of the beholder !
CognitiveDissident

So, if it’s a rat, YUKK!
(But if it’s a mole, AWWWWWWW!)
Culturedropout

For some reason, it made me think of the short story, “All My Darling Daughters” by Connie Willis. 8-/
Culturedropout

Thanks, Intelligent Design…!
morkl

What is that? That freaky thing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A1AEIeQ_Ak
Jack

That guy who had his â€œwoo hooâ€œ cut off by the lady who was not Lorena Bobbitt? Tell him there are options. There are options.
Jesse M.

Apparently aside from smell, mole rats sense the world mainly with their teeth! They certainly are weird and fascinating creatures. One thing I wonder about: I know with insects that live in colonies like ants, the colony as a whole often exhibits collective behaviors more “intelligent” than individual insects (like how ants find food very efficiently using scent trails), are there similar sorts of collective behaviors in mole rat colonies?
Lady Katey

It looks like that Dallas Weins (? the first US face transplant recipient) guy. If you don’t know, DO NOT look him up. :shudder:
Anonymous

What, Am I the only one who thought they were looking at the Pink Panther when they first saw this?
OldAsiaHand

Imagine you’re a wild chimpanzee and you’re seeing your first human. This must be pretty much how we look … but MUCH BIGGER. Now you know why they run screaming from us.
Mister44

Fire
Kill it with it.
Anonymous

everyone is a Critic
Mark Crummett

Adorable. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
efergus3

One of the reasons that they’re being studied is that they NEVER get cancer.
Anonymous

where are its eyes?

that thing is creepy
efergus3

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026152812.htm
jtegnell

Kind of surprised nobody chimed in about this yet, but naked mole rats, along with the closely related Damaraland mole rat, are the only eusocial mammals, in that they have a queen and sterile offspring much like bees, ants, termites, and some wasps.

Weird, huh?
seanpatgallagher

They say all art comes from nature.

Now I know where H.R. Giger gets his inspiration.

-S
Nicky G

No, but really — where the f–k are the eyes and ears?
Godfree

Naked mole rat doesn’t give a s**t. Eww, what’s that in its mouth? Naked mole rat doesn’t care.
Bubba

They lose the cuteness factor a little while after they burst out of you shipmates chest.
AirPillo

It’s so adorable I just want to stomp on it.
License Farm

Rufus!
Anonymous

Please tell me this has no opposable thumbs. It already looks like its made from european grandpa skin. Thumbs would be too much.
ROSSINDETROIT

38 comments and nobody has remarked that it’s not actually naked, or a mole, or a rat?
- Bubba
  
  Is it wearing a teeny tiny thong?
Anonymous

That looks a bit like my… nevermind.
gwailo_joe

I like naked mole rats. Also giant huntsman spiders or viperfish; the kind of critter so unique, interesting and guaranteed to evoke a response…

such as ‘GET IT OFF GET IT OFFA ME AAIIIEEEEE!!!’
- Anonymous
  
  I always liked viperfish. They look like they should be the ‘boss’ in an early 90s Nintendo shooter. I’m not even gonna comment on the wang with teeth, er… naked mole rat. Sorry.
Gawain Lavers

Awwwww. So cute!
gwailo_joe

Just last week was watching some nature show about ‘weird’ animals and the scientists that love them.

Some university in the US (Nashville?) has a huge naked mole rat colony, all made out of transparent tubes. Looked big and intricate. Seemed kind of sterile for the little mole rats, but the tubes connected to rooms of dirt and some such: seemingly pleasant for a naked mole rat. They looked contented enough. The queen was…impressive, but I somehow hoped for a huge globular throbbing presence with double the teeth at three times the length gnashing and snapping in blind fury. But no.

Naked mole rat people really Love naked mole rats. I can dig it.

The hagfish guy though… ‘it’s the most interesting animal in the world! Look at the rasping jaws! And when frightened it excretes copious amounts of slime!’ *sqeeeeze* -thrash- ~Glorp~

Yeah, sorry…not feeling the hagfish.
- Anonymous
  
  Hagfish don’t have jaws. That’s the whole point.
- Anonymous
  
  The San Diego Zoo has a pretty good nekkid mole rat colony a lot like Joe described but likely smaller. I seem to recall maybe a couple of dozen, including young, in an area maybe three feet by two by one. It’s been some small while since I’ve been there, tho’.
- angusm
  
  In “Log from the Sea of Cortes”, John Steinbeck describes his friend Ed Ricketts, owner of a lab that sold biological specimens, posting a sign that read “Beautiful and delightful hagfish”, as an illustration of Ricketts’ ability to be charmed by even the least appealing critters in the animal kingdom.
  
  In the unlikely event that God exists, I suspect that things like the platypus and the naked mole rat (it’s blind and hairless! it’s a mammal that acts like a social insect! it senses the world with its teeth!) represent ‘Easter eggs’ that He threw into His creation one wet afternoon when He was bored and couldn’t summon up the energy to work on the next scheduled feature.
Anonymous

Time to bring out the fatman and mini nukes!
tylerkaraszewski

It looks like a scrotum with teeth and hands.
- blendergasket
  
  Up until just now I wanted to do something with my life that helped people. Now you helped me realize that I actually want to become a scrotum with teeth and hands.
- frankieboy
  
  OK, but gentle with the teeth
Anonymous

I remember mole rats from the film “Fast Cheap & Out Of Control” and they can certainly be mean to any mole rat from a different tribe who wanders into their territory.
Anonymous

ADORABLE?!

That’s the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth!!

http://thepinksmoke.com/images/2006paleman.jpg
Anonymous

Ah – this is some new use of the word ‘adorable’ that I wasn’t previously aware.