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Naked rats are amazing. They spend their lives almost underground, do not experience any type of pain, can go without oxygen for long periods of time, are less prone to cancer, and can live past 30 years, which is decades longer than rats of similar species. They are also friendly, like ants, bees, or termites—out of a hundred animals, only one female, the queen, breeds.
We did not know exactly how naked queens of rats prevent other females from breeding. For a long time, our leading thoughts were brutality and violence, but this may not be possible, because their empires have huge ridges that can be up to three kilometers long. But now a team of scientists from the Lewin Lab at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin discovered that it is only one part of the modern communication program.
Running on the scent
“It’s obvious that rats have very large noses and are very good at smelling,” says Gary Lewin, a neuroscientist at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine and lead author of the study. Rats have about 1,200 olfactory genes, more than mice (which have about 1,000) and more than a few hundred in humans. They are also blind. “They have to walk and walk without vision, so smell is one of the things that is encouraged,” Lewin said.
