Species: Heterocephalus glaber
Naked mole rats was also a good name for a rock band (I say that a lot), but they gave it up. It is still a good name for a kind of animal, however.
Naked mole-rats are nearly hairless rodents, dependent on underground tubers and roots for their food. The are native to East Africa, especially Somalia, with range overlap to Ethiopia and Kenya. Besides their popularity as displays in zoos and characters in Disney flicks, they are hugely interesting from the biological standpoint. There is no one thing that is "most notable", so here is a short list of "interesting bits."
First, naked mole rats live in large colonies. Unlike other mammalian colonies, however, theirs is a eusocial society, a caste system similar to social bees and wasps, dominated by one reproductive female (the "queen"), with all the other individuals performing worker, warrior and other roles for the good of the colony. Queens live 12-28 years, and can produce more than 1000 pups. So far, only one other eusocial mammal has been identified, an unrelated mole rat species.
Naked mole rats also have an impressive, and apparently growing list of odd physiological and biological things about them. They have, for example, no pain sensation in skin due to a failure to synthesize the relevant neurotransmitter, Substance P. UIC Professor Thomas Parks introduced Substance P to the animals "by applying a nonreproductive herpes simplex I virus to one paw. The virus enters nerve endings in the paw and migrates up the nerve fibers. The virus carries the DNA to produce Substance P, which can then be released into the spinal cord when nerve cells are stimulated with painful stimuli." The result was restoration of the animals's ability to feel pain.
As might be expected, the other result of this study is that naked mole rats are now model species for studying neurotransmitters, pain and healing.
NMRs are nearly poikilothermic, i.e. cold blooded. They have seemingly lost their ability to regulate body temperature, but his may not be a big problem in their subterranean, tropical habitat where conditions vary little anyhow.
Of course, this sealed tunnel arrangement has its drawbacks, too. Ventilation is one key one. The NMR tunnel is low in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide, a condition we (as humans) find distinctly untenable. These animals, however, have highly efficient hemoglobin as well as tolerance of high CO2 levels.
Interestingly, at least when living at or near the surface, as in labs or zoos, O2 levels are not that low. Recent studies have reported that under such conditions, naked mole rats suffer higher levels of oxidative stress and oxidative damage than other animals (e.g. mice) but live as much as 7 times longer. In a 2005 review, Rochelle Buffenstein (City University of New York) examined this aspect of NMR biology, and its implications for studies of aging in humans.
Reproductively, naked mole rats break the rules in a number of ways. The sole reproductive female in a colony (the "queen") has more babies in a litter than she has mammaries to nurse them. The solution? The babies share. And as a break from a general rule, in this case of bilateral symmetry in body plans, the females in some populations carry a mutation leading to an odd number of mammaries (asymmetry) is common.
Finally, naked mole rats have made it into a completely different kind of literature: childrens books. The Naked Mole-Rat Letters by Mary Amato involves a zoo, a long distance romance, an unhappy child, and a happy ending.