Sweet? Naked mole rats can survive without oxygen using plant sugar tactic

The subterranean rodents are able to switch to a fructose-based metabolic system previously only observed in plants, a new study reveals

They feel no pain, don't get cancer and look like baggy-skinned sausages with teeth: the naked mole rat is already famously weird. Now scientists have discovered what could be the subterranean rodents' strangest trait yet: they can survive without oxygen by switching to a metabolic strategy normally used by plants.

By switching from a glucose-based metabolic system, which depends on oxygen, to one that uses fructose instead, mole rats can cope with nearly twenty minutes in air with 0% oxygen. Under the same conditions, a human would die within minutes.