The Sensory World of the Naked Mole-Rat

Naked mole-rats are subterranean mammals that are native to equatorial east Africa including Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. They are unusual among subterranean mammals in that they live in very large colonies where many respiring animals deplete oxygen and overproduce carbon dioxide. Some of their sensory traits, such as poor vision and hearing, are considered typical of subterranean mammals. However, naked mole-rats display three sensory traits that are unusual even among subterranean mammals. First, they possess a sensitive sensory array of body vibrissae on their otherwise furless bodies. Second, they have a greatly reduced sense of inflammatory and chemical pain, but express acute mechanical and thermal pain. Third, naked mole-rats, and likely other African mole-rat species, are the only rodents known that show no postbirth growth of the vomeronasal organ, an organ associated with sensing pheromones. These sensory traits, along with extreme tolerance to hypoxia and resistance to cancer, make the naked mole-rat an important animal model for studying sensory systems as well as in multiple other scientific fields.