Naked Mole Rat

Naked Mole Rat (Heterocephalus glaber)

These little adorable monsters are from Eastern Africa. They live in groups in large networks of tunnels. At the zoo, they have a special room you can walk into where their burrows are set up like a large ant farm, so you can see everything.

Ruth interrupting here: When I first went to the naked mole rat enclosure, I searched all their little windows to find the little guys. There are several windows, most of them empty. In one window I noticed a water dish and some chopped up vegetables: celery, lettuce, and yams in large orange slices. “No rats there,” I said to myself and continued looking. I found another window with what looked like whole yams stacked up. “Are they saving those for winter?” I wondered to myself. “That seems unnecessary.” Then one of the yams wiggled his tiny nose at me and rolled over. That pile was mole rats and not yams at all. So, I recommend for camouflage tactics that naked mole rats hide in grocery store produce sections near the root vegetables. If they stay very still, no one will recognize them…