Long-lived slave owners
The social system of naked diggers: slaves are raised from infancy
Naked diggers, small African burrowing rodents, have become famous in recent years thanks to their superpowers: unique longevity, resistance to cancer and lack of oxygen, low pain sensitivity, etc. New, unexpected features to the appearance of these supermen have been added by recent studies of social interaction between their colonies, in which slavery flourishes.
Article by Braude et al. Inter‐colony invasion between wild naked mole‐rat colonies is published in the Journal of Zoology.
Naked diggers (Heterocephalus glaber) live in large "families" or colonies of up to 300 individuals, of which only one "ruling pair" reproduces. All the others are just infertile workers engaged in labor activities: digging tunnels, foraging, caring for offspring, etc.
Initially, it was believed that due to closely related interbreeding, the degree of kinship of individuals in such a colony should be very high, but in reality this turned out not to be the case.
It has long been noticed that naked diggers are aggressive towards adult representatives of other colonies, which can cause the death of small families. However, they do not kill other people's cubs, but kidnap them. Back in 1991, scientists observed how naked navvies in captivity gnawed through their plastic "burrows" to get to another colony and take live prey to their nest. In the laboratory, the researchers returned the abducted "to their homeland", but what happens in the wild?
During a long-term study in the national park of Kenya, American scientists found that naked diggers periodically dig into the burrows of neighbors, and several times they managed to capture someone else's colony. In 1994, researchers documented one such invasion in which cubs were abducted, and ten years later (these small animals live for over 30 years), tissue genotyping showed that two working individuals of the aggressor colony were born in the captured colony.
In fairness, it must be said that aggressive behavior towards relatives and "baby abduction" is characteristic not only of naked diggers: it is recorded in other small burrowing mammals with a social lifestyle, as well as some species of monkeys and birds. It is assumed that "foster children" give primates the opportunity to gain parental experience or, in the future, a promising mating partner, and birds – to increase reproductive success by expanding the group.
The new life circumstances of the abducted individuals from naked diggers can be safely classified as "slavery", given that they do not reproduce, but work all their lives for individuals who are not related to them. In this sense, the term is often used when describing social insects, for example, honey ants. The only difference between the social structure of naked diggers and typical slavery is that the indigenous inhabitants of the nest work on a par with outsiders. Apparently, such intraspecific slavery gives colonies of these animals a competitive advantage over their neighbors.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru