Animals

Pairi Daiza Foundation

TICKETS & RESERVATIONS

Naked Mole Rat

Rat-taupe nu – Pairi Daiza
Rodent

It is insensitive to pain

This rodent is truly exceptional! Living in large underground colonies, within a vast network of tunnels, it hardly needs to see and its eyes are therefore atrophied; on the other hand, its hearing and its sense of smell are highly developed.

The skin, hairless, is particularly flexible and resistant to wounds. The Naked Mole Rat lives for 20 to 30 years (in captivity), which corresponds to more than 500 years for a human being! It is completely immunised against cancers and it is insensitive to pain.

Its social organisation resembles that of various social insects (termites, ants): only one female (the “queen”) reproduces, with a harem of males. The other individuals are divided into classes: soldiers, workers, nurses… which, in addition to their “professional” function, also have a different morphology, unique among mammals.

The Naked Mole Rat is vegetarian, eating the roots of savannah plants, which also provide it with water: so it never drinks. Not being a ruminant, it improves the digestion of cellulose-rich diet by eating a part of its excrements in order to digest them a second time.

Rat-taupe nu – Pairi Daiza
Identity card

A less threatened species

  • Name : Naked Mole Rat
  • Latin name : Heterocephalus glaber
  • Origin : Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya
  • IUCN status : Least concerned
  • Cites : --

Sponsor the Naked Mole Rat

Sponsorship amounts are exclusively for the Pairi Daiza Foundation for projects for the conservation and protection of threatened species.

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