Time: 10:00am - 5:00pm Venue: Excel Centre Royal Victoria Dock, 1 Western Gateway London E16 1XL
Come and visit a colony of naked mole rat and take part in a drawing workshop at the New Scientist Live 2017 Event from Thursday 28-September to October 1st
Listed as one of the NSL top 7 things to see in the Metro newspaper on September 14th 2017, the Naked Mole Rat stand demonstrates the data art the moles created using the RAT.systems real-time data artwork - animation, data vis, soft robot sculptures. Animal life drawing workshops are also available.
The stand is hosted by Dr Chris Faulkes Molecular ecologist (School of Biological and Chemical Sciences ) and Julie Freeman (EECS) Queen Mary University of London.
Dr Chris Faulkes will also be delivering his talk:
They fight off cancer, undergo puberty in days, and live in highly complex societies with surprising similarities to Game of Thrones. Enter the incredible world of the naked mole-rat. Naked mole-rats are unique among mammals, with many unusual features resulting from extreme adaptations to living underground. Groups commonly contain 100 or more individuals, yet a single dominant breeding queen and 1-3 males monopolise reproduction.
The rest of the colony of both sexes do not breed but instead carry out ‘work’ or defence-related activities. An astonishing 99% of naked mole-rats never reproduce. At all. Ever. The queen behaviourally harasses these non-breeders and the resulting stress somehow shuts down their reproductive systems.
But this can be rapidly reversed – for instance, if the queen dies, non-breeders can literally go through puberty in a matter of days. Naked mole-rats’ natural resistance to cancer have also made them an important model system for healthy aging, as well as giving us a rare insight into the evolution of complex societies.
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