In addition to powerups, there are two new rocks that can drop onto enemies. There is also just a simple powerup to make pumping faster. There is a power to remove all the dirt in the level, and a power-up that rains down on the level, getting rid of dirt, and killing any enemies that it touches. There is a laser gun powerup that gives you the ability to shoot the enemies instead of inflating them, which is useful because the death is constant with the gun compared to the pump.
There are multiple powerups that randomly spawn throughout the levels, and a lot of them are useful. Pictured: A small non-breeder, carrying food back to one of the food chambers after a foraging expedition.Another gameplay addition that isn't brought to the table is powerups.
Because mole-rats grow larger throughout their lifetime, it has been hypothesized that colony-maintenance and foraging fall to the younger generation, while the older generation graduates to colony defense ( 22).įor more information on social roles and their development, see Ontogeny. Males and females participate equally in each of these two roles the only determining factor is body weight. Larger non-breeding individuals, on the other hand, take on more of a defensive role, patrolling the burrow and guarding the nest chamber. These complex burrows require a good deal of maintenance – a task performed primarily by small, non-breeding individuals. This system is comprised mainly of deeply dug chambers (nests, toilet chambers, food storage, etc.), though there are even deeper tunnels for protection and thermoregulation, as well as more shallow tunnels for foraging purposes. Naked mole-rats are subterranean beings, which spend their entire life in an underground burrow system. Pictured: A pregnant breeding female surrounded by smaller non-breeding colony members. Though about three-quarters of the male population undergo spermatogenesis, none of the colony members (save the breeding female and her 1 to 3 male counterparts) exhibit mating behavior ( 13,22). This is not to say they are sterile rather, they are “sociologically suppressed by aggressive dominance of the breeding female” ( 14, p. All females save one are reproductively quiescent, with underdeveloped ovaries and uteri ( 14). Most animals in the colony are non-breeding. In order to lay claim to reproductive status, these new large females will fight each other, often to the death, until a successor emerges ( 22). If the breeding female is removed from the colony, other females in the colony will undergo a rapid increase in body mass in preparation for possible reproduction. Reproductive females have been shown to breed for over thirteen years, producing litters of up to 27 pups every two to three months. She is responsible for the care and upbringing of all pups in the colony, with the help of 1 to 3 reproductive males. She is the only reproductively active female in the entire colony, and thus all colony members are either her offspring or her close relatives. ( F)Īt the very heart of the eusocial structure is the breeding female (sometimes referred to as the “queen”). Note the large front teeth used in tunnel excavation. Pictured: A naked mole-rat with eyes open. glaber, and serve to strengthen the assertion that the naked mole-rat is, in fact, a eusocial mammal. Regardless of whether or not such criteria need be included in the definition, however, they are certainly present in observed behavior of H. argue, “…additional criteria such as the existence of castes, colony size, reproductive skew, and social cohesion are not pertinent to the definition…” ( 4, p. say that eusociality in mammals refers to “…species that live in colonies of overlapping generations in which one or a few individuals produce all the offspring and the rest serve as functionally sterile helpers (workers, soldiers) in rearing juveniles and protecting the colony” ( 22, p. That the idea of eusociality fundamentally excludes mammals (and all other non-insects) shows just how extraordinary it is that H. By definition, eusocial means, “of or pertaining to a form of insect society, as that of ants, characterized by specialization of tasks and cooperative care of the young” ( 9).
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