By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science
Contributor | January 30, 2018 07:37am ET
Just when it seemed the naked mole rat
couldn't get any weirder, it turns out the buck-toothed, bare-skinned rodents
don't even age.
Unlike literally every other mammal, naked
mole rats don't become more likely to die as they get up there in years. In
humans, for example, with all else being equal besides age, a person's risk of
dying doubles every 8 years after age 40. For naked mole rats (Heterocephalus
glaber), there is no increase in the risk of death even
when the rats are 25 times older than the onset of sexual maturity.
"It doesn't matter how old you
are," said Rochelle Buffenstein, a senior principal investigator at Calico
Life Sciences LLC, a research company in San Francisco. "Your death is
random." [Extreme Life
on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures]
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