Everyone works for the rat queen
With greyish pink hairless skin, a few bristly hairs and protruding front teeth, the naked mole-rat is an unusual creature not only for its looks, but for a social structure that is very rare among mammals.
The naked mole-rat lives almost its entire life in dark tunnels that it digs in Africa’s dry soil while searching for food. There the naked mole-rats build large colonies with a queen that is the only one that reproduces. And for this purpose, she has a harem of males to mate with, and all from the same colony, making ongoing generations highly inbred and almost genetically identical. The queen gives birth to 4-5 litters a year. A typical litter consists of 12 babies, but litters of 27 babies have been recorded. The offspring get care from workers at the bottom of the hierarchy, who also feed the queen. Above the workers, but below the queen and her harem, are the soldiers which protect the colony against enemies; these are identified by their different smells.