How to milk a naked mole-rat
LEADING LADY Most naked mole-rats never have babies, but a queen can have three litters a year with a dozen pups each.
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For the sake of science, Olav Oftedal has milked bats, bears and a lot of other mammals. But a naked mole-rat was something new.
“The thin, hairless skin is so translucent that you can see the milk accumulating in the mammary glands,” says Oftedal, of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md.