The naked mole rat queen rules with iron paws. These wrinkled buck-toothed monarchs forbid other females from breeding. That is, until the Queen dies and all hell breaks loose. Then the once pious females rise up and fight each other in bloody battle for the throne. They attack other females, kill pups, and wreak havoc until one female becomes dominant and victorious, claiming the throne and becoming the only breeding female in the colony.
But something unexpected happened at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. The Queen peacefully transferred her power to one of her daughters, without death or bloodshed.
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Naked mole rats are eusocial and divide their colonies into reproductive and non-reproductive individuals (support staff), the former consisting of a single female capable of giving birth. A similar hierarchical structure exists in beehives and ant colonies. Researchers in the new study say it’s a rigorous strategy that works in relatively stable and predictable environments, such as the arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa where wild naked mole rats live.
But this arrangement is not without risks. For example, puppies with a single female’s genes may not be diverse enough to ensure that an individual survives challenges from unforeseen events such as disease or environmental disasters. According to the researchers, when a queen violently exercises dominance, it can be energetically costly and cause injury. So they wondered if there was some room in this hierarchy – could these bloodthirsty creatures live and reproduce together?
“We have known for years that only one female, the queen, reproduces and that queen succession occurs through intense queen competition,” study co-author Shanes Abeywardena, a postdoctoral fellow in Ayers’ lab, said in a statement. “We wanted to know if multiple queens can exist peacefully.”
Ayers, Abeywardena and colleagues began their study in July 2019 with a small, well-functioning family consisting of a queen named Tere, a fertile male, and her four pups, one of which was male. To simulate a “queen dies” type scenario without eliminating the reigning rodent, the researchers created a variety of scenarios that could change the queen’s reproductive activity, from increasing the number of offspring in the kingdom to relocating the colony. Tere stopped breeding for almost a year after researchers moved the family to a new facility called the Amigos Colony.
Two of her daughters (brothers born in 2019) then began breeding one after another. One of them, named Arwen, peacefully took over the role of sole procreative queen at the end of 2025.
The study, published today in Science Advances, suggests that peaceful succession is indeed possible in one of the only eusocial (and bloodiest) mammals, the researchers say.
This article first appeared in Scientific American. ©ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook.
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