00:00 Naked mole rats were already pretty strange,
00:02 but now scientists have discovered a quirk in their brains that makes them even weirder.
00:08 Naked mole rats live in underground colonies and must huddle together to keep warm because the rodents are essentially cold-blooded,
00:18 meaning that their body temperature varies drastically with their environment rather than being regulated internally like ours is.
00:25 All cooped up underground, naked mole rats survive on very little oxygen and a ton of carbon dioxide,
00:31 which is expelled from the body as a waste product.
00:34 But now a study has revealed that naked mole rats actually need carbon dioxide to survive.
00:40 The compound tamps down their brain activity and keeps them from having seizures.
00:45 Researchers found that naked mole rats actually seek out areas of their nests with the highest concentration of carbon dioxide.
00:53 But why?
00:55 Turns out due to a genetic mutation,
00:57 naked mole rats lack a control mechanism in their brains that helps to keep its electrical activity under control.
01:04 This control mechanism uses up a lot of energy to run, so by relying on carbon dioxide instead,
01:11 the mole rats actually conserve precious energy stores.
01:15 When the human brain is exposed to carbon dioxide, its electrical activity can also be suppressed.
01:21 This is a great hack for mole rats to use underground.
01:25 But it leaves the rodents prone to seizures if CO2 levels in their nests dip too low or if they venture out into the air
01:32 outside their nests for some reason.
01:35 Some humans actually have the same genetic quirk that makes naked mole rats seizure prone and
01:41 these peoples appear to be at higher risk of certain forms of epilepsy.
01:46 For that reason,
01:48 scientists think that naked mole rats might serve as a good animal model to study certain types of seizures in people.
01:56 [Sound effects]
01:58 (wind blowing)
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