Antonio Olmos / Alamy Stock Photo
A naked mole rat queen relies on her colony to help raise her pups, and she may manipulate their parenting instincts through hormones hidden in her faeces – exploiting the fact that colony members willingly eat her waste.
Naked mole rats live in colonies in which the queen is the only reproducing female, so she needs other colony members to help look after the pups. Kazutaka Mogi at Azabu University in Japan, and his colleagues wanted to know whether a pregnant queen could influence the …