00:00Naked mole rats were already pretty strange, but now scientists have discovered a quirk in their brains that makes them
00:07even weirder.
00:11Naked mole rats live in underground colonies and must huddle together to keep warm, because the rodents are essentially cold
00:18-blooded,
00:18meaning 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
00:33expelled 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
01:02keep 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
01:12rats actually conserve precious energy stores.
01:15When 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
01:28CO2 levels in their nests dip too low or if they venture out into the air outside their nests for
01:34some reason.
01:35Some humans actually have the same genetic quirk that makes naked mole rats seizure prone, and these peoples appear to
01:43be at higher risk of certain forms of epilepsy.
01:46For that reason, scientists think that naked mole rats might serve as a good animal model to study certain types
01:54of seizures in people.
01:58Some humans are not more at all.
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