AnAge entry for Heterocephalus glaber

Lifespan, ageing, and relevant traits

These bizarre underground animals from the Horn of Africa live in cooperative colonies, a protected and thermally buffered environment. Their body temperature is relatively low and they appear to be cold-intolerant. They are one of the longest lived rodents with a record longevity of 28.3 years in captivity. Cancer has not been reported in these animals [0689]. In the wild, breeders have been known to live up to 17 years but non-breeders do not commonly live more than 2 or 3 years (Stan Braude, pers. comm.).

Life history traits (averages)

Metabolism

References

[0756] Buffenstein (2008), Negligible senescence in the longest living rodent, the naked mole-rat: insights from a successfully aging species, PubMed
[0783] Csiszar et al. (2007), Vascular aging in the longest-living rodent, the naked mole rat, PubMed
[0776] Seluanov et al. (2007), Telomerase activity coevolves with body mass not lifespan, PubMed
[0786] Andziak and Buffenstein (2006), Disparate patterns of age-related changes in lipid peroxidation in long-lived naked mole-rats and shorter-lived mice, PubMed
[0754] Labinskyy et al. (2006), Comparison of endothelial function, O2-* and H2O2 production, and vascular oxidative stress resistance between the longest-living rodent, the naked mole rat, and mice, PubMed
[0755] Andziak et al. (2006), High oxidative damage levels in the longest-living rodent, the naked mole-rat, PubMed
[0689] Buffenstein (2005), The naked mole-rat: a new long-living model for human aging research, PubMed
[0603] Andziak et al. (2005), Antioxidants do not explain the disparate longevity between mice and the longest-living rodent, the naked mole-rat, PubMed
[0715] Lorenzini et al. (2005), Cellular replicative capacity correlates primarily with species body mass not longevity, PubMed
[0481] Austad (2005), Diverse aging rates in metazoans: targets for functional genomics, PubMed
[0036] Savage et al. (2004), The predominance of quarter-power scaling in biology
[0420] White and Seymour (2003), Mammalian basal metabolic rate is proportional to body mass2/3, PubMed
[0005] Buffenstein and Jarvis (2002), The naked mole rat--a new record for the oldest living rodent, PubMed
[0184] O'Connor et al. (2002), Prolonged longevity in naked mole-rats: age-related changes in metabolism, body composition and gastrointestinal function, PubMed
[0434] Ronald Nowak (1999), Walker's Mammals of the World
[0455] Virginia Hayssen et al. (1993), Asdell's Patterns of Mammalian Reproduction: A Compendium of Species-Specific Data
[0050] Paul Sherman et al. (1991), The Biology of the Naked Mole-Rat
[0731] Zullinger et al. (1984), Fitting sigmoid equations to mammalian growth curves

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