Educational Media Reviews Online

The naked mole rat is indigenous to East Africa. It lives an entirely subterranean existence in large colonies and completely lacks eyesight. The species has a social structure remarkably similar to that of the social insects, e.g. ants, wasps and termites, including kidnapping and slavery. Although its existence has been known by Westerners for well over one hundred years, study of it was hampered by high mortality rates occasioned by the methods used to entrap large numbers of the animal. Recent efforts at humane recovery of the naked mole rat have succeeded in sequestering entire colonies, including their queens, with little or no loss of life. The film describes the species and its behavior patterns and follows researchers in East Africa as they collect specimens in a slow, patient process. Heightened attention to humane forms of animal collection has resulted in the ability to establish entire colonies in captivity for better and more accurate analysis of the animal’s physiology, behavior patterns and position in the semiarid East African biome.

Recommended for libraries from high school to university with audiovisual collections in animal behavior and zoology.