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.
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00:00 Naked mole rats were already pretty strange, but now scientists have discovered a quirk
00:06 in their brains that makes them even weirder.
00:12 Naked mole rats live in underground colonies and must huddle together to keep warm, because
00:16 the rodents are essentially cold-blooded, meaning that their body temperature varies
00:21 drastically with their environment, rather than being regulated internally, like ours
00:25 is.
00:26 All cooped up underground, naked mole rats survive on very little oxygen and a ton of
00:31 carbon dioxide, which is expelled from the body as a waste product.
00:36 But now a study has revealed that naked mole rats actually need carbon dioxide to survive.
00:41 The compound tamps down their brain activity and keeps them from having seizures.
00:47 Researchers found that naked mole rats actually seek out areas of their nests with the highest
00:51 concentration of carbon dioxide.
00:54 But why?
00:55 Turns out, due to a genetic mutation, naked mole rats lack a control mechanism in their
01:01 brains that helps to keep its electrical activity under control.
01:05 This control mechanism uses up a lot of energy to run, so by relying on carbon dioxide instead,
01:12 the mole rats actually conserve precious energy stores.
01:16 When the human brain is exposed to carbon dioxide, its electrical activity can also
01:20 be suppressed.
01:22 This is a great hack for mole rats to use underground, but it leaves the rodents prone
01:27 to seizures if CO2 levels in their nests dip too low or if they venture out into the air
01:33 outside their nests for some reason.
01:36 Some humans actually have the same genetic quirk that makes naked mole rats seizure-prone,
01:42 and these peoples appear to be at higher risk of certain forms of epilepsy.
01:47 For that reason, scientists think that naked mole rats might serve as a good animal model
01:53 to study certain types of seizures in people.
01:56 [static]
01:57 (wind blowing)
02:00 (wind whooshing)