"Lazy mole rats that get fat to have sex
05 April 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition
YOU'RE fat, lazy, and only the prospect of mating can propel you into
action. But that's just fine - as long as you're an African mole rat.
Your fellow colony members will even toil to support you.
Zoologists studying the Damaraland mole rat (Cryptomys damarensis) in
its native southern Africa have discovered that its colonies are split
into two distinct castes of worker. One group is hard-working and
industrious; the other is fat and rather work-shy.
Damaraland mole rats and naked mole rats are thought to be the only
mammal species that live and breed cooperatively, with some colony
members devoting their lives to helping others reproduce. To explore
their unusual lifestyle, Michael Scantlebury of the University of
Pretoria, South Africa, and colleagues in the UK studied the
creatures' energy demands and activity levels.
They found that the industrious mole rats performed more than 95 per
cent of the total work of the colony. The lazy mole rats built up
their fat stores, placing a double burden on the colony - doing
virtually no work, but requiring more food (Nature, vol 440, p 795).
Just one thing gets the lazy mole rats going. In the wet season, when
the soil is moist and soft, they go into overdrive, digging burrows to
help them strike out and reproduce, possibly mating with other
colonies or even founding colonies of their own."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19025465.500&feedId=online-news_rss20
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