It may be ugly, but it could save lives

THE naked mole rat is not the prettiest of creatures.

It has no hair, apart from a few whiskers, and its little pink body resembles a half-grown embryo. Two yellow teeth protrude like walrus tusks from the upper jaw, penetrating the lower lip. Big eyes are appealing in an animal but its peepers are tiny. The little rodent may be ugly, but it makes up for this in other ways; its abilities go beyond those of much more famous animals. Not only has it developed immunity to killer diseases which plague us humans, it seems to have stumbled on the key to immortality or, at any rate, longevity. In Move over Lab Rat, in the October 23 edition of New Scientist, Kirsten Weir described some research being done on this intriguing species. Here is the gist of what she had to say.

Small creatures live short lives. The pigmy shrew, for example, lasts about a year, while a brown rat is lucky to reach the age of three even in captivity. Naked mole rats, however, can live for three decades, 10 times as long as other animals of their size. They don’t become senile, suffer from heart disease or develop brittle bones. Females remain fertile to the end of their lives. Cancer has never been detected in mole rats, nor do they develop the disease when injected with cancer cells. So what is their secret elixir of life?