[Anim. Behav., 1996, 52, 957–969]
Abstract: Naked mole-rats, Heterocephalus glaber, are eusocial, subterranean rodents that inhabit arid regions of northeastern Africa. They feed on bulbs and tubers that are patchily distributed. Nests are often located far from the nearest food source through a labyrinth of tunnels. Two captive colonies were studied to determine whether successful foragers recruit colony mates and, if so, how. Individuals that found a new food source typically gave a special vocalization on their way back to the nest and waved the food around once they got there. Colony mates preferentially visited the site where the initial forager had obtained food, often bypassing alternative sites containing the same type of food. Recruits preferred to use tunnels that had been traversed by the 'scout' rather than an alternative pathway to the same food, regardless of whether they had to turn in the same or the opposite direction from that of the scout to enter the previously used pathway. Recruits preferred tunnels that the scout had recently used over tunnels that were recently traversed by another colony mate carrying the same type of food. When tunnels traversed by the scout were replaced with clean substitutes or with tunnels that were recently traversed by another colony mate carrying the same type of food, recruits showed no pathway preferences. Results indicate that naked mole-rats follow each other’s (odour) trails to food. There are intriguing parallels between the foraging recruitment system of H. glaber and those of other social vertebrates and insects.

The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is a small, hairless rodent in the family bathyergidae. Physically similar to gophers the naked mole-rat is adapted to a fossorial habitat, digging elaborate burrows with their impressive incisors and feeding on plant roots and tubers.

Aug. 9, 1999
Only hungry babies and grown-up biologists worry whether there are enough mammary glands to go around.
Naked mole-rat mothers don't worry. Even when a female produces more than two dozen pups and has "only" a dozen mammary glands to feed them, naked mole-rat society has a way of keeping peace in the underground nests, according to the cover-story article in the August 1999 Journal of Mammalogy by Paul W. Sherman, Stanton Braude and Jennifer U.M. Jarvis.

[Journal of Zoology (2001), 253:351-357.]
Most naked mole-rats are countershaded, with purple-grey dorsal but pale pink ventral skin. The exceptions to this coloration pattern are uniformly pink, and include newborn pups, most queens and breeding males, and very old animals. Countershading begins to appear at 2-3 weeks of age and begins to disappear at c. 7 years of age.

[Hormones and Behavior, Vol: 31, Issue: 3]
The study investigated the role of odor cues from two naked mole-rat colonies, in conjunction with behavioral cues from nonbreeding colony members, in maintaining suppression of ovulation in subordinate female naked mole-rats isolated from the two parent colonies.

[Can. J. Zool./Rev. Can. Zool. 80(3): 436-441 (2002)]
We examined 25 burrows of seven species within the Bathyergidae and used a simple box-counting method to determine their fractal dimension, which we propose as a measure of burrow architecture that allows explicit testing of differences in African mole-rat burrows within the theoretical framework of the aridity food-distribution hypothesis.

[J Anim Physiol Anim Nutr, Vol 87, Issue 11-12, pp. 421-432]
Es wird über die Haltung einer Nacktmull - Gruppe (Heterocephalus glaber; 9 m + 13 w) berichtet, die 1996 aus Kenya importiert wurde.

Only hungry babies and grown-up biologists worry whether there are enough mammary glands to go around.
Naked mole-rat mothers don't worry. Even when a female produces more than two dozen pups and has "only" a dozen mammary glands to feed them, naked mole-rat society has a way of keeping peace in the underground nests, according to the cover-story article in the August 1999 Journal of Mammalogy by Paul W. Sherman, Stanton Braude and Jennifer U.M. Jarvis.

Virtually hairless, venerably wrinkled and very nearly blind, naked mole-rats -- those homely rodents from underground Africa -- remind some zoo-goers of little old men.
The resemblance is more than coincidence. They really are really old males -- and females, too -- biologists report in an article scheduled for November publication in the Journal of Zoology (Vol. 258, Part 3). Many naked mole-rats (Heterocephalis glaber ) in laboratory colonies in the United States and South Africa have lived more than 20 years, and some are at least 26 years old, making them by far the oldest small rodents in captivity.

Cornell biologist Paul Sherman writes children's books about mysterious mammal

Google mag es kaum glauben, dass jemand nach so etwas sucht: Als Alternative zur Suchanfrage "Nacktmull" bietet Google "Nacktmodell". Doch immer mehr Surfer suchen und finden und feiern stattdessen ein Nacktmodell, das als "hässlichstes Tier der Welt" gilt.

Manche halten ihn für das hässlichste Tier auf Erden, böse Zungen vergleichen ihn gar mit einem geplatzten Hot Dog. Der Nacktmull aber hat eine wundersame Eigenschaft, wie Forscher herausfanden: Er spürt keinen chronischen Schmerz.

The Naked Mole Rat is one of the strangest mammals. They live in family colonies of about 20 to 30, but can exceed one hundred individuals. Their social structure is rather like that of ants and bees as the only one who produces babies is the "queen".

Somatosensory cortex dominated by the representation of teeth in the naked mole-rat brain
We investigated naked mole-rat somatosensory cortex to determine how brain areas are modified in mammals with unusual and extreme sensory specializations. Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) have numerous anatomical specializations for a subterranean existence, including rows of sensory hairs along the body and tail, reduced eyes, and ears sensitive to low frequencies. However, chief among their adaptations are behaviorally important, enlarged incisors permanently exterior to the oral cavity that are used for digging, object manipulation, social interactions, and feeding. Here we report an extraordinary brain organization where nearly one-third (31%) of primary somatosensory cortex is devoted to the representations of the upper and lower incisors. In addition, somatosensory cortex is greatly enlarged (as a proportion of total neocortical area) compared with closely related laboratory rats. Finally, somatosensory cortex in naked mole-rats encompasses virtually all of the neocortex normally devoted to vision. These findings indicate that major cortical remodeling has occurred in naked mole-rats, paralleling the anatomical and behavioral specializations related to fossorial life.

Behavioural ecology: Naked mole-rats on the move
The discovery of a disperser morph in naked mole-rat colonies has revealed the first possible outbreeding mechanism for this unusual mammal, and provides another remarkable parallel to the eusocial insects.

Dispersal and new colony formation in wild naked mole-rats: evidence against inbreeding as the system of mating
Early field work on naked mole-rats, Heterocephalus glaber, suggested that small colonies are rare and that colonies can only form by fissioning of existing colonies. Many researchers expected that this would result in extreme inbreeding and high relatedness within colonies and would thus explain the evolution of eusociality in naked mole-rats. Here I report evidence of dispersers and outbreeding in colonies of wild naked mole-rats that suggests that inbreeding is not the system of mating for this species and that outbreeding is probably frequent. Wild dispersers have the same morphology as was reported for dispersers in laboratory colonies. Low levels of genetic variation in previous molecular genetic studies of naked mole-rats probably result from the viscous population structure typical of fossorial rodents.
Behavioral Ecology -- Abstracts: Braude 11 (1): 7

Ciszek, D. 1999. "Heterocephalus glaber" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web.

Endowed with pinkish-gray, wrinkly skin, scant hair, and long buck teeth, naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) aren't likely to win any beauty contests. Some might refer to them as downright ugly, resembling an overcooked hotdog with teeth. Nonetheless, biologists and zoogoers are enchanted with these bizarre rodents.

Den Untersuchungen der Wissenschaftler zufolge fehlt Nacktmullen eine Schlüsselsubstanz bei der Übertragung von Schmerzreizen, die bei Patienten mit chronischen Schmerzen im Übermaß auftritt. Werden die Tiere zur Produktion dieser Substanz gebracht, steigt ihre Schmerzempfindlichkeit deutlich an.