Red and Blue make Purple

[Red and Blue make Purple]

sciencealert.com

We Finally Know How Naked Mole Rats Survive Without Oxygen, and It's Really Freaking Weird

Naked mole rats ( Heterocephalus glaber ) have never been the most conventional mammal - the scrotum-looking creatures are resistant to cancer , can survive almost 20 minutes without oxygen, and can barely feel pain .

Carly Cassella

[myfrogcroaked]

Instead of sticking to a glucose-based system, which is dependent on oxygen, when a naked mole rat is deprived of oxygen, it switches its metabolism so that its brain cells start burning fructose for energy instead of glucose.  

Fructose can be turned into energy anaerobically - which means it doesn’t require the presence of oxygen to be broken down into cellular energy.

Until now, this anaerobic pathway was thought only to be used by plants.