Naked milk rat
6 May For researcher Dr Olav Oftedal, milking strange animals is nothing new, but when he set off to milk naked mole-rats, he was in for a few.
3 May For the sake of science, Olav Oftedal has milked bats, bears and a lot of other mammals. But a naked mole-rat was something new.
If you can milk a cow, you can milk a mole-rat
Being naked may help explain unusual milk
Rat Temple, India — Miru Kim
Status Quo: He hates people but admires animals like Toby and Wellington. He always goes home to take care of Toby his pet rat. He goes to school.
Description:By Micaela Jemison Parents normally feel the need to provide well for their kids. For humans, that number of offspring is usually in the single digits, but a naked mole-rat queen can have as many as pups in a lifetime spanning up to 30 years. Naked mole-rats live their lives entirely underground in Africa, digging tunnels in a perpetual search for plant tubers to eat. These bizarre creatures are unlike nearly every other mammal on earth in that the burdens of reproduction and milk feeding of young are placed solely on a single queen and are not shared among the females of the colony. Meghan Murphy While this system may work well for insects like bees where the young are fed by a horde of workers and nurses, scientists were perplexed as to how this system works for a mammal where one mother must produce milk for her very large brood.
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