The Longevity of Naked Mole Rats

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Here's a good popular science piece on research into the longevity of naked mole rats: "Some of the 'hottest' research on naked mole rats today concerns senescence, or aging. Naked mole rats in the lab have reached up to 28 years of age. And it's not just the controlled environments of their captivity that are doing this. Braude has observed mole rats in the wild that are 17 years and older. ... For a rodent of this size, they are ridiculously long-lived ... A key component in the aging of any species is oxidative damage, where the cells accrue damage from poisons, environmental toxins and other effects throughout life. In such a long-lived rodent, it was thought that naked mole rats had a very efficient way of repairing oxidative damage. This wasn't the case, however, and current theory points to the strange metabolism of this hairless wonder. Naked mole rats appear to deal with oxidative stress in pulses, largely due to their ability to essentially shut down their metabolism when there are hardships, such as lack of food. In this way, mole rats may be able to rid their body of harmful reducing agents and poisons more easily during these metabolic pulses. ... Another way to think of it is, their gross life span might be 28 years, but their metabolism is going in these short bursts so maybe the net damage is only 3 or 4 years of net use. They're living their life in pulses."

Link: http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/10217.html