00:00Naked mole rats were already pretty strange, but now scientists have discovered a quirk
00:06in their brains that makes them even weirder.
00:12Naked mole rats live in underground colonies and must huddle together to keep warm, because
00:16the rodents are essentially cold-blooded, meaning that their body temperature varies
00:21drastically with their environment, rather than being regulated internally, like ours
00:25is.
00:26All cooped up underground, naked mole rats survive on very little oxygen and a ton of
00:31carbon dioxide, which is expelled from the body as a waste product.
00:36But now a study has revealed that naked mole rats actually need carbon dioxide to survive.
00:41The compound tamps down their brain activity and keeps them from having seizures.
00:47Researchers found that naked mole rats actually seek out areas of their nests with the highest
00:51concentration of carbon dioxide.
00:54But why?
00:55Turns out, due to a genetic mutation, naked mole rats lack a control mechanism in their
01:01brains that helps to keep its electrical activity under control.
01:05This control mechanism uses up a lot of energy to run, so by relying on carbon dioxide instead,
01:12the mole rats actually conserve precious energy stores.
01:16When the human brain is exposed to carbon dioxide, its electrical activity can also
01:20be suppressed.
01:22This is a great hack for mole rats to use underground, but it leaves the rodents prone
01:27to seizures if CO2 levels in their nests dip too low, or if they venture out into the air
01:33outside their nests for some reason.
01:36Some humans actually have the same genetic quirk that makes naked mole rats seizure-prone,
01:42and these peoples appear to be at higher risk of certain forms of epilepsy.
01:47For that reason, scientists think that naked mole rats might serve as a good animal model
01:53to study certain types of seizures in people.
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