More Fun Than Fun: The Unlikely Stardom of the Naked Mole Rat 03/03/2021
I knew about the naked mole rat (
Heterocephalus glaber) as a little curiosity in my field of research on social insects, the curiosity being that it is the only known eusocial (truly social) mammal, comparable in many ways to eusocial ants, bees and wasps. Imagine my surprise while browsing the internet when I came across a children’s book entitled
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by the American best-selling creator of children’s books, Mo Willems. In the story, one naked mole rat ‘Wilbur’ decides to be different and defy societal norms by wearing clothes, allowing the author to teach children about tolerating other people who may be different from us.
There are over 100 words for the noise a dog makes, in more than 60 languages, according to the work of psychologist Stanley Coren. These range from “ouah-ouah” in France to others less recognisable to English speakers, such as “hong-hong”, apparently, in Thailand. Of course, these differences only reflect the languages of the countries in question, and are nothing to do with the animals themselves.
What’s less widely recognised is that genuine differences can exist in the sounds some wild animals make to communicate, even in different parts of the same country. Song birds such as chaffinches, for example, can show regional differences in the calls they make. This might help to distinguish neighbours from outsiders.