Naked Mole Rats are able to live in Acidic Enviroment!

Naked mole rats are making a steady progress on being able to live in an acidic environment where other mammal’s even humans would not be able to do! In African naked mole-rats burrows the carbon dioxide levels build up where the air become too toxic for other mammals but for the naked mole rats they go on with their daily business, the air does not do any harm to them. As scientist Thomas Park said, ‘Much of the lingering pain of an injury for example is caused by acidification of the injured tissues.’ He also said that Acidification is an unavoidable side effect of injury. So these animals feel no pain from air of the environment they are living in. He said there should be new ways in which humans could be able to have that effect. In the nose of the naked mole rat it has nerve fibers that are then activated by the fumes, triggering the nucleus, of the nerves in the brain stem. The scientists then tried a few different tests putting the naked mole rats into different cages of different acid fumes, the animals could do what they wanted and the scientists kept track of what they were doing. They also compared their behavior with mice, rats, and other rodents related to them. Park said, ‘the naked mole rats spent as much time exposing themselves to acidic fumes as they spent in no fume areas’ but other species avoided the fumes. 

So this news was really cool and interesting because I guess I never really hear information about rodents and smaller creatures.  But when they talk about them being able to live in an environment with toxic fumes where humans and other mammals cannot, is very interesting. 

Bibliography

"Naked Mole-Rats May Hold Clues to Pain Relief." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 Sept. 2012. Web. 23 Sept. 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120921180752.htm>.