The long, strange life of the naked mole rat | Hacker News Reader

The long, strange life of the naked mole rat

wired.com

68 points0-_-017 comments

I think this quote may be key "because they live in deep desert burrows, mole rats have few natural predators."

Having few natural predators seems to a commonality with exceptionally long-lives species.

This made me wonder, do naked mole-rats have lower genetic diversity than other mammals? Turns out they do https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Seems to me it's likely that the more natural predators a species has, the more evolutionary pressure it has to increase genetic diversity. One of the ways to increase genetic diversity is to turn up the rate of aging, so you don't get some long lived individuals that keeps having children for ages.

On the flip-side, with few natural predators, genetic diversity isn't as important and the rate of aging can be turned down.

‘Fast, Cheap & Out of Control’ is a fun and wild Errol Morris documentary that, in part, covers a naked mole rate specialist.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119107/

Came in to mention this. What a great documentary, as are most of Morris’ stuff. I learned more about mole rats than I ever wanted to know.

The documentary is really about genius and goes into how the specialist is so into mole rats. I wish I was into anything as much as that guy is into mole rats.

I used to say in a karmic cycle I want to come back as an otter, they're cute. But, I begin to think this choice may be better.

Sharks are the other good choice. Cold water isn't attractive but 150+ years. Why? I guess when you occupy the right niche, the bugs leave you alone.

I would think that if you're a shark, cold water IS attractive.

Most sharks live in warm (ish) waters.

Is that true? There are polar and temperate sharks, and I know from my local diving there are quite a lot out even when temperatures are around 7-10 degrees C.

I suppose most of the type I see are less glorious varieties about the size of my arm, but sharks nonetheless.

Of course - basking sharks, and greenland sharks, for example. But I did say "most" and "warmish".

Maybe to sharks the air is the real water.

It was back before the dinosaurs took to the air and banished fish to the oceans

Wow, this shows that Australia has as many shark species as several oceans combined! Haha, what a cool place.

https://www.shark.ch/Database/Distribution/index.html

You're right though, warmer waters tend to have more species. I'm not able to find anything indicating actual numbers of sharks, but more species (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to indicate a larger cumulative population and more and/or more diverse prey

In another life I'd love to be a marine biologist. There's so much to know and understand better.

As a Greenland Shark, you're even looking forward to something like 250-500 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark

Deep freeze lifestyle. You'll live every one of those 500 years.. slowly. That's a lot of reruns.

I'm getting flashbacks to the game Fallout 4. It's a post-apocalyptic open world kind of game, and the first thing you fight, are huge mole rats. The studio (Bethesda) has been acquired by Microsoft recently.

It always bothered me that mole rats were a common enemy in those games. Mole rats are native to East Africa, not the Eastern US.

Seems like the Ginkgo biloba does not age at all

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/how-ginkgo-biloba-ac...

I still remember this funny segment from Bill Nye the Science Guy, where he discusses naked mole rats.

https://youtu.be/fj48ewrkSFQ

Reply on news.ycombinator.com