The study suggests that some naked mole rats are born just to clean toilets

Maybe you live in a family that likes to divide up household chores. You take the dishes while someone else throws out the trash. If so, you’re not far off from the habits of the naked mole rat, according to a new study.

The results were published Wednesday in the journal Advancement of scienceNaked mole rats are shown to perform specific duties for their colony, including digging, transporting litter, and cleaning “latrines.” The study reveals that the mice perform a type of task distribution that helps the colony operate more efficiently, according to the researchers.

“Overall, our findings reveal distinct roles for breeders and marked behavioral diversity among non-breeders, underscoring the complexity of the social organization of naked mole rats,” they wrote.

An unattainable social system

naked mole rats (Heterocephaly) are small, almost hairless rodents that live underground in large colonies. These colonies can consist of several hundred individuals and extend through miles of tunnels.

These colonies are eusocial, meaning they exhibit the highest level of organization in animal social behavior. In social systems, one female and a few males produce all the offspring, while most of the other individuals are put to work. Bee colonies are another common example of a social system. Remarkably, naked mole rats are one of only two species of mammals known to exhibit this social structure.

Just like the bees, scientists did Found Naked mole rats perform a variety of tasks, but it was not clear whether individuals consistently adhere to specific functions or are more flexible. Answering this question has long eluded researchers due to the challenges of monitoring an entire underground colony over long periods of time, but a team led by Masanori Yamakawa of Kumamoto University in Japan has found a way.

Track the underground workforce

Yamakawa and his colleagues developed an automated radio-frequency identification (RFID) tracking system to monitor 102 naked mole rats across five captive colonies for 30 days.

Each colony has assigned specific functions to different “rooms,” typically including a nest, a toilet, a litter, and six additional rooms. The nest was where individuals congregated and rested, the litter was where they deposited waste such as excess food or dried feces, and the toilet – well, you get the picture.

The researchers implanted microchips in mole rats and installed detectors throughout their colony boxes, allowing them to track everywhere they went and the individuals they interacted with. While the breeding group is stuck together, non-breeding individuals can be divided into six “groups” based on their behavior.

Based on the rooms in which they spent long periods of time, the researchers concluded that these groups were performing different, specific tasks. For example, Group 1 individuals showed high mobility and high occupancy in litter chambers, suggesting that they may function as litter men. Meanwhile, Group 5 individuals – who spent a lot of time in toilet rooms – may be responsible for cleaning toilets.

The researchers found that the body weight and age of individuals had a significant impact on their cluster assignment, suggesting that the functions of naked mole rats may change as they grow. But most subjects (95%) remained committed to their assigned roles throughout the entire 30-day study period, suggesting that they did not switch tasks frequently. Maybe sad times for mole rats in toilets.

This work provides a detailed look at the complex social structure of this elusive species. Future studies could build on these insights by manipulating variables to stimulate behavioral changes or incorporating other monitoring methods, according to the researchers. This could help “reveal the fundamental mechanisms that drive a cooperative society,” they wrote.