Friday, April 26, 2024

Naked mole rats speak several accents!

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Maria Gill
Maria Gill
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The “House of Knowledge” is like a collection of stories. Beautiful stories that tell the living in all its freshness. But also, in all its complexities. Arch to marvel at the world’s treasures. In this new episode, let’s go back to Africa and meet an amazing rodent: the naked mole rat.

The Taupe mouse no. It is a funny animal. Kind of a giant mouse that lives underneath Earth From the arid regions of Ethiopia and south of the Sahara. No hair. Too small eyes. Large incisors. In short, a physique One can easily get caught up in being ugly.

However, researchers are very interested in mole rats. Because her skin heals amazingly quickly. Because it is almost Insensitive to burns. Because it looks resistant to cancer. Or because it shows no sign of aging. Until the day before his death!

But if we’re talking about it today, that’s also because Taupe mouse no It is a great way to communicate. Tweet. It creaks. Tweet. Roars. And all of this in one Dialect specific to her colony. One way, according to the researchers, is to strengthen cohesion and a sense of belonging within a group. To ensure its prosperity.

At the heart of the dialect culture is female

But how did the researchers find out Dialects On the strange noises that naked mole rats make? By recording more than 36,000 tweets over a period of two years. Then by analyzing the acoustic properties of these sounds using an algorithm.

The idea of ​​dialect communication seems somewhat clever when you learn that food can run out on the dry plains where the naked mole rat lives. Thus, all the rodents in the colony work in harmony, each according to their rank, to fulfill the role assigned to them.

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Because the researchers confirmed that, too. Naked mole rats know how to distinguish their colony accent from another colony accent. And she is there “the Queen” The colony – the only breeding female in the group – is responsible for maintaining the integrity of each tone. Understand the mechanisms that support, in brain Naked mole rats, this one Linguistic culture Cleanliness can shed light on the development of this type of culture among us as humans. Because the funny Rodents This communication system has developed much before us. Not stupid, naked mole rat!

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