Naked Mole-Rat
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40 free Naked Mole-Rat trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The naked mole-rat looks like a joke and behaves like a science-fiction creature. It is a rodent, yet it is neither a mole nor a rat, and almost everything about its body and its family life breaks the rules most mammals follow. That is why zoos put colonies on show and laboratories study them so closely. These questions cover the fun facts people look for: where the animals live, how a colony is organised around its queen, what is on the menu, how they dig, the odd things their bodies can shrug off, and how long they last. A few questions visit the cartoons and picture books that made the species famous with children. The quiz suits curious kids, classrooms, zoo visitors and anyone who enjoys a strange-but-true animal fact. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing why the fact is true.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do naked mole-rats mainly use to dig their tunnels through hard-packed soil?
Their teeth
Their teeth do the digging, and their lips close behind them so no soil gets into the mouth while they work.
Q 02Medical researchers prize naked mole-rats for their remarkable resistance to which disease?
Cancer
Cancer is so rare in the species that years of watching large colonies found no cases at all. The first two tumours ever recorded were only reported in 2016, in zoo animals.
Q 03Unlike nearly every other mammal, naked mole-rats share which trait with lizards and frogs?
Being cold-blooded
Being cold-blooded, in effect: a naked mole-rat's body temperature drifts with its surroundings, so chilly animals huddle in a pile or bask in sun-warmed shallow tunnels.
Q 04To get more nutrients out of tough, hard-to-digest meals, naked mole-rats regularly eat what?
Their own poop
Their own poop gets a second trip through the gut so nothing is wasted. Workers also feed it to pups once the queen's milk stops after about a month.
Q 05Which Disney Channel cartoon features Rufus, a naked mole-rat who rides in Ron Stoppable's pocket?
Kim Possible
Kim Possible takes Rufus along on the teenage hero's missions with her sidekick Ron, and a New York Times review singled the mole-rat out for praise.
Q 06Naked mole-rats can scurry through their narrow tunnels just as fast in which unusual direction?
Backwards
Backwards is as quick as forwards for a naked mole-rat, a useful trick in tunnels only about 4 centimetres across.
Q 07Acid and the fiery compound in chilli peppers both fail to make a naked mole-rat feel what?
Pain
Pain signals never fire because the nerve fibres in the skin lack a key chemical messenger, which also seems to leave the animals free of itching.
Q 08Naked mole-rats have been known to chew their way through which tough building material?
Concrete
Concrete can give way to their gnawing, yet in the wild they do most of a year's digging just after the rains, when the hard ground softens.
Q 09In which part of the world do wild naked mole-rats dig their burrows beneath hot, dry grassland?
East Africa
East Africa is their only home: wild colonies live under the dry grasslands of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, in burrows whose tunnels can add up to 4 kilometres.
Q 10Which predators, able to slip straight into the tunnels, are the main hunters of naked mole-rats?
Snakes
Snakes such as the rufous beaked snake can follow the animals down their own tunnels, and up to three naked mole-rats have been found in a single stomach.
Q 11Naked mole-rats are not truly bald: their bodies carry about 100 fine hairs that work like what?
Whiskers
Whiskers, in effect: the sparse hairs sense touch, letting the animals feel their way along tunnel walls in the dark.
Q 12Many people wrongly think naked mole-rats entirely lack which sense, though it still works a little?
Sight
Sight is weak but not gone: their tiny eyes can still see a little, although tests in light and dark show the animals behave the same either way.
Q 13The naked mole-rat is also known by which cuter nickname, even though the animal is a rodent?
Sand puppy
Sand puppy is the affectionate alternative name, though the animal is neither dog nor mole nor rat: it is the only species in its genus, Heterocephalus.
Q 21Which Pigeon picture-book author wrote Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, about a mole-rat named Wilbur?
Mo Willems
Mo Willems published the book in 2009; Wilbur upsets his colony by wearing clothes, and the story later became a stage musical and an animated film.
Q 22How does the IUCN Red List rate the naked mole-rat, an animal widespread across its dry homeland?
Least Concern
Least Concern is the rating: the animals are numerous and face no major threat, although a life spent underground makes them almost impossible to spot.
Q 23Naked mole-rats can live in air that is 80 percent which gas, common in stuffy, crowded burrows?
Carbon dioxide
Q 14The little mounds of soil kicked out by digging naked mole-rats are nicknamed after which landforms?
Volcanoes
Volcanoes of kicked-out earth are the only sign of a colony above ground, and the animals are at their most vulnerable to predators while making them.
Q 15When a naked mole-rat queen dies, how is the colony's next queen usually decided?
Females fight for it
Females fight for it, sometimes to the death, and the winner is never secure: she must keep seeing off challengers to stay in charge.
Q 16What name is given to the biggest, heaviest workers in a naked mole-rat colony?
Soldiers
Soldiers answer an alarm call from the workers and may pile on top of one another to plug the tunnel, so an intruder meets a wall of snapping mouths.
Q 17Naked mole-rats never need to dig for water; where does all of their moisture come from?
Their food
Their food is juicy enough to supply every drop, a handy trick in semi-arid country where burrowing is the only way the animals find anything to eat.
Q 18What do wild naked mole-rats mainly eat, tunnelling long distances underground to find it?
Tubers
Tubers can weigh a thousand times as much as the animal eating them, and a colony hollows out only the inside so the plant keeps growing and feeds it for months.
Q 19Naked mole-rats roll around in which room of the burrow so every colony member smells the same?
The toilet chamber
The toilet chamber doubles as an identity badge: colony mates recognise one another, and spot intruders from other colonies, by their shared smell.
Q 20Despite the name, naked mole-rats are more closely related to which pets than to moles or rats?
Guinea pigs
Guinea pigs and chinchillas sit closer on the family tree than any true mole or rat, and the naked mole-rat is the only mole-rat with practically no hair.
Carbon dioxide builds up because the tunnels are poorly ventilated, and the animals are so used to stale air that they pick low-oxygen air over normal air when offered both.
Q 24Which term do biologists use for naked mole-rat society, with one breeding queen and many workers?
Eusocial
Eusocial was coined in 1966 to describe certain bees, and the naked mole-rat later became the first mammal shown to fit the definition.
Q 25Rufus the naked mole-rat is mistaken for a lost alien experiment in a crossover with which series?
Lilo & Stitch
Lilo & Stitch: The Series borrowed him for a 2005 episode named after him, in which Jumba takes the hairless pet for one of his own missing creations.
Q 26A newly crowned naked mole-rat queen grows longer by widening the gaps between which bones?
Her vertebrae
Her vertebrae spread apart once she takes the throne, stretching her body so she has room to carry big litters of pups.
Q 27Each naked mole-rat colony shares what, which even adopted pups pick up from their new home?
A vocal dialect
A vocal dialect marks who belongs: soft chirps differ from colony to colony, and the dialect falls apart when the queen is lost until a new one takes over.
Q 28Naked mole-rat litters can outnumber the queen's teats, so how do all of the pups get fed?
They take turns nursing
They take turns nursing from the same teat, which lets a queen with about a dozen teats raise litters of more than two dozen pups.
Q 29Some naked mole-rats, called dispersers, are built to leave home; what do they carry for the trip?
Large fat reserves
Large fat reserves fuel the trek, and dispersers ignore their own queen: they will only mate with strangers, which brings fresh blood into newly founded colonies.
Q 30Naked mole-rats outlive every other rodent; which much larger rodent comes second, at 28 years?
Porcupine
Porcupine lifespans top out near 28 years, while a naked mole-rat only about three inches long has lived past 37.