Figure 1 The appearance of the naked mole-rat has been shaped by natural selection
Naked mole-rats are found in arid regions of east Africa (e.g. Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia). One of the most remarkable things about them, and what originally drew scientists to study them, is their extreme sociality. They live in cooperative breeding colonies that resemble those of social insects such as bees (BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES REVIEW, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 26–29), ants and termites. This lifestyle is termed eusociality. Their social groups can contain up to 300 individuals, yet only a single female — the queen — breeds (see Box 1).
Natural selection
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