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Article: Naked and not: two species of mole rats run complex societies underground.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- June 24, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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On his first trip into Namibia, Chris Faulkes woke up in his tent with a peculiar kink in his back. The ground beneath him had been flat enough when he went to sleep. Yet the next morning, "there was a whopping great lump," he says. A mound of dirt had arisen under Faulkes. He'd inadvertently found--or been found by--Damaraland mole rats, the very creatures he'd come to study. With one of the oddest social systems yet found in mammals, these sub-Saharan rodents spend their lives in networks of underground tunnels that they continually excavate.
These mole rats and a better-known species called naked mole rats survive in land that goes months without rain. When ...