We expel carbon dioxide as waste. Naked mole rats bathe their brains in it to prevent seizures. The unique animals thrive underground but cannot handle the lack of carbon dioxide above.
00:00Naked mole rats were already pretty strange, but now scientists have discovered a quirk in their brains that makes them even weirder.
00:11Naked mole rats live in underground colonies and must huddle together to keep warm, because the rodents are essentially cold-blooded,
00:19meaning that their body temperature varies drastically with their environment, rather than being regulated internally, like ours is.
00:25All cooped up underground, naked mole rats survive on very little oxygen and a ton of carbon dioxide, which is expelled from the body as a waste product.
00:35But 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.
00:46Researchers found that naked mole rats actually seek out areas of their nests with the highest concentration of carbon dioxide.
00:54But why?
00:54Turns out, due to a genetic mutation, naked mole rats lack a control mechanism in their brains 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, the mole rats actually conserve precious energy stores.
01:16When the human brain is exposed to carbon dioxide, its electrical activity can also be suppressed.
01:21This is a great hack for mole rats to use underground, 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 outside their nests for some reason.
01:35Some humans actually have the same genetic quirk that makes naked mole rats seizure prone, and 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 to study certain types of seizures in people.
01:56For that reason, scientists aren't afraid to go on the same amount of inanimate.
01:56Because eliminated go the same.
01:57That was a very common creature of a good animal model to study certain types of diseases.
01:59For that reason, scientists如果 researchers have the same type of animal, they typically take a different animal model to study certain types of homes.
02:00It takes time for temperatures to be the same type of animal models.
02:00For that reason, scientists think that in the world is responsible for manufacturing.
02:02For that reason, scientists understand that the world is only one angle yet to deliver, but we have the same type of animal models.
02:04Do not have a lot of these kinds of diseases.
02:05For that no matter, scientists don't have anything to be able to add to itself.
