A closer look
Naked mole rats are virtually immune to cancer and can survive for almost twenty minutes without oxygen by metabolizing fructose just like a plant. These horrifyingly wrinkled, cold-blooded mammals live in underground colonies ruled by a single queen, much like bees, and defy almost every biological rule that applies to normal rodents. When deprived of oxygen, their brain stops burning glucose and switches to fructose, a neat little trick that prevents massive tissue damage and sudden death. It is deeply frustrating that the cure to human aging and terminal disease might just be locked inside the DNA of an animal that looks like a freshly shaved, heavily mutated hot dog left out in the sun too long
