Supermen or supervillains? Why do naked diggers take children into slavery

Naked diggers have been admired by scientists for more than a decade for their incredible "superman" abilities. They can survive without oxygen for 20 minutes, tolerate the highest level of pain, are able to resist aging and cancer. But recent studies have shown that these animals are more likely to be supervillains than heroes, since they have a number of repulsive features. It turned out that, among other things, the diggers turn other people's cubs into slaves.

Naked diggers (Heterocephalus glaber) live in nature in huge underground colonies: they are inhabited by several dozen key individuals and up to 300 working animals, most of which are infertile. In this way, diggers resemble bees or ants, with their clear distribution of roles in the family. No other mammal on the planet creates such large-scale and well-organized communities — their underground communities are arranged like cities of social insects.

The body length of a naked digger is only 10-13 cm, while it is difficult to find a more ugly animal in the world of mammals. In the family, the reproduction of offspring is occupied by the queen, who receives her high status in a bloody duel with rivals. The queen brings up to 30 cubs in one litter, while she entrusts the care of the offspring to working individuals. To force them to fulfill their whims, the female feeds the subordinates with feces containing a shock dose of special hormones that suppress the will.

For a very long time, scientists were convinced that the colonies of diggers grow due to closely related interbreeding. But recently it turned out that this is not the case. Zoologists in the early 90s caught a batch of these animals in different regions of Africa and released them in Kenya, in the area where their brethren have been living for a long time.

After a while, it turned out that the new colonists had expanded their burrows to the possessions of their neighbors. 26 new communities began to intensively occupy the" cities " of their neighbors, and individuals from 13 local colonies disappeared without a trace as a result of such expansion. Only two years later, scientists found two tagged animals from the captured colonies in the families of the invaders. Their fate in a strange clan was unenviable — the prisoners were deprived of the opportunity to reproduce and turned into working individuals.

The cruelty inherent in living organisms helps them to survive in extremely harsh conditions and even increase their population. Scientists continue to observe the naked diggers, who will surely give many more amazing, though not necessarily pleasant discoveries.