Lives of a Mole Rat

Damaraland mole rats dig tunnels by biting away the soil with large front teeth that arise outside their mouths. A digger can thus keep its mouth closed and dirtfree.

Photo by Tim Jackson

Naked mole rats, which are blind and nearly hairless, live in underground colonies with one queen.

Photo by Jessie Cohen, Smithsonian National Zoological Park.

A Damaraland mole rat sniffs the air.

Photo by Jessie Cohen, Smithsonian National Zoological Park.

Naked mole rats can live a long time. Twenty-one-year-old Cornell University student Dara Neumann holds a mole rat that was born years before she was.

© Cornell University

This distorted drawing illustrates how much of a mole rat's brain is devoted to its various body parts. The large size of the teeth shows that much of a mole rat's brain is concerned with getting feedback from the teeth, rather than with hearing, seeing, or smelling. What other body part seems to be important to this animal?

Lana Finch

Adult naked mole rats are about 7 centimeters (3 inches) long and weigh 30 to 70 grams (1 to 2.4 ounces).

Photo by Marc Bretzfelder, Smithsonian National Zoological Park.