An international team of doctors and biologists has discovered a new “superpower” in the naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber). These mammals are able to survive without harm for significant periods of time without oxygen at all: they survived 18 minutes in an atmosphere containing pure nitrogen. As scientists have found, under conditions of oxygen starvation, animals have learned to control their metabolism. As carbohydrates that provided the cells with the energy they needed, the diggers used not glucose, the breakdown of which slows down in the absence or lack of oxygen, but fructose. The study was published in Science.