Mice are very prone to cancer; in some strains, 90 percent of them die of tumors. People have stronger defenses against cancer, as is necessary for a long-lived animal: the disease accounts for 23 percent of human mortality. But the mole rat has taken its anticancer defenses even further: it seems not to get the disease at all.
Full report from The New York Times.
I don’t think I’d want to emulate their diet. But who knew about the squirrels.
Interesting. So what does the mole rat know that we don’t?
The answer is almost certainly not in the mole rat’s diet. It’s in the genes.
What can we learn from rats? We learn that if you have to be a rat, it’s better to be a mole rat.
We can learn that a rat isn’t a rat.