How Communism Works¶
Naked mole rats are among the ugliest creatures in the animal kingdom, and they engage in acts that seem repulsive — such as eating one another’s, and their own, faeces. … Now researchers have found one biological motivation for this behaviour. When a queen mole rat’s subordinates feed on her hormone-filled faeces, the resulting oestrogen boost causes the beta rats to take care of the queen’s pups … […] Like bees, naked mole rats live in eusocial colonies, with only one queen rat and a few males that can reproduce. The rest of the colony consists of dozens of infertile subordinates that help with tasks such as foraging and defending the nest. The subordinate rats also take care of the queen’s pups as though the babies were their own: they build the nests, lick the pups and keep them warm with their body heat.
We’re almost there. Hail the New Collectivist Man:
“Sue Carter, a behavioural neurobiologist at Indiana University in Bloomington, says that the animals’ method of transferring parental responsibility through faeces is interesting.”
(Don’t say you weren’t warned.)