This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under FYI. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I don’t think I’d want to emulate their diet. But who knew about the squirrels.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Interesting. So what does the mole rat know that we don’t?
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:55 pm
The answer is almost certainly not in the mole rat’s diet. It’s in the genes.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:09 am
What can we learn from rats? We learn that if you have to be a rat, it’s better to be a mole rat.
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:42 am
We can learn that a rat isn’t a rat.