You're fat, lazy, and only the prospect of mating can propel you into action. But that's just fine - as long as you're an African mole rat. Your fellow colony members will even toil to support you.

They found that the industrious mole rats performed more than 95 per cent of the total work of the colony. The lazy mole rats built up their fat stores, placing a double burden on the colony - doing virtually no work, but requiring more food (Nature, vol 440, p 795).

Just one thing gets the lazy mole rats going. In the wet season, when the soil is moist and soft, they go into overdrive, digging burrows to help them strike out and reproduce, possibly mating with other colonies or even founding colonies of their own.

posted by issek @ 12:37