These Are The Most Disgusting Animals On The Planet

April 2024 ยท 2 minute read

The naked mole-rat really does look exactly as it sounds: a bit like a mole, a bit like a rat, and entirely, horribly hairless. It is repulsive in the same way that sphynx cats are repulsive, in that its baggy pink skin makes it look like an elderly human who's had a particularly hard life and perhaps smoked 60 a day.

It would be unfair to turn against the naked mole-rat for its wrinkled hairlessness alone; it'll happen to us all someday, right? But in case you're starting to find them cute, there is another fact about naked mole-rats (also occasionally referred to as "sand puppies," which has surely disappointed some small children in the past) which will make you happy to know they're not going to be coming to a petting zoo near you anything soon: that unlike other mammals, the naked mole-rat is cold-blooded (per Fact Animal). In this, it has more in common with snakes and lizards than with its fellow rodents, an evolutionary trait that the species has developed to cope with inhabiting the scorching hot sands of East Africa.

Another off-putting thing about naked mole-rats is their lifestyle; while many rodents live in communal burrows these creatures are unusual in that they are "eusocial," with a single queen, a small number of males with whom the queen reproduces, and scores of worker mole-rats, a social system which is most common among insects such as termites, ants, and bees (per The Guardian). Weird.

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