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Article: Exposed: The Strange and Hidden Lives of Naked Mole-Rats.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- National Wildlife
- Article date:
- August 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 National Wildlife Federation. 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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When behavioral ecologist Paul Sherman steps into his laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, he enters another world. The two rooms hold huge labyrinths of Plexiglas tubing measuring 2 inches in diameter through which 106 naked mole-rats scurry about.
The natural habitat of these hairless, gerbil-sized rodents is far from these rooms, in the hard-baked soil of dry regions in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. There the animals live in colonies that usually number about 75 members, digging extensive tunnel systems far from the eyes of researchers. For 20 years, the exposed animals in Sherman's lab have been helping researchers observe the species to an ...