We want to know if mole rats make good encryption objects.
– Julie Freeman, “Got our eyes on you!”, NewScientist (17 February 2018, paywall)
Followed by …
Their nest behaviours might generate true random numbers, handy for data security. “But the mole-rat queens are far too predictable…
I’ve heard of random electrical signals coming in on unused data ports being used for random numbers, but this is the next step up! This all goes along with this report from Smithsonian Magazine:
How are naked mole rats weird? Let us count the ways: They’re cold-blooded mammals, they organize their breeding colonies like insects, they turn into super babysitters after eating poop, and they can survive for up to 18 minutes without any oxygen. As Kai Kupferschmidt reports for Science, a new study has found that these bizarre critters also appear to defy everything we know about the way mammals age—and could hold clues to slow aging in humans.
And as a bonus, they star in the documentary Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)!
