Yes, you read that title correctly. I’m talking about naked mole rats, the burrowing hairless rodents with a face only a mother could love. You might just know them for their strange appearance, but naked mole rats have fascinated scientists for decades due to their extreme longevity. They are by far the longest-lived rodent species, with a maximum lifespan of more than 30 years, compared to only 2 years for your typical mouse. They also are practically immune to cancer, for reasons we don’t entirely understand.

So what does this have to do with Alzheimer’s? Well, another one of the naked mole rat’s strange quirks is that it possesses extremely high levels of amyloid-beta, the toxic protein that is believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease. In humans, amyloid-beta aggregates into sticky plaques in the brain, which can cause a whole host of problems. Amazingly, naked mole rats have even higher amyloid-beta levels than 3xTg-AD mice, which are an Alzheimer’s mouse model genetically engineered to over-produce amyloid-beta. However, the amyloid-beta found in naked mole rats is less sticky and does not tend to form plaques, despite being just as toxic to neurons. Additionally, while amyloid-beta in humans increases as we age, its levels remain constant in naked mole rats. This suggests that amyloid-beta could be harmless (or possibly even beneficial) when it’s present in its non-sticky form. A 2015 report also found that the brains of old naked mole rats look more like what you’d expect to see in a baby animal’s brain, with high numbers of new neurons constantly being formed.

The fact that naked mole rats possess exceedingly high levels of amyloid-beta throughout their lifespan, yet do not develop Alzheimer’s disease, makes them an extremely useful research subject. If scientists can unravel what makes these rodents so resistant to amyloid-beta, we might be able to apply this finding to humans in the form of a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. So even though they may not be the cutest creatures, you might someday have the naked mole rat to thank for keeping your brain healthy!

Here are some more fun facts about naked mole rats! They have no sense of pain and are nearly blind.

They are almost entirely cold-blooded, relying on their environment to regulate body temperature.

In order to live underground, naked mole rats have evolved very low rates of breathing and metabolism, and can survive for up to 5 hours in low-oxygen conditions.

They live in eusocial colonies similar to ants or bees, with a single queen that produces all the colony’s offspring.

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