Naked Mole Rat Colonies Have Their Own Unique Dialects

Chirp dialects appear to be enforced by the colony’s queen, but scientists aren’t sure how.

Written byAmanda Heidt

| 6 min read

mole-rat, naked mole-rat, animal behavior, social behavior, dialect, language, eusocial, evolution,

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ABOVE: Naked mole rats have an impressive vocal repertoire of 17 unique sounds. The most common, the soft chirp, can be used to distinguish between colonies and individual mole rats.
FELIX PETERMANN, MDC

Each colony of naked mole rats speaks its own unique dialect of chirps, a social feature that appears to be mediated by the colony’s queen and learned during adolescence, according to a study published January 29 in Science. This ability to modify and adapt language may be the first example in a rodent of production learning—the type of language learning that humans use to create new sounds in response to our experiences—opening up a new model system for studying the joint evolution of vocal and social complexity.

“It’s surprising to find a new model of a social animal that has dialects,” says Thomas Park, a neurobiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied naked mole ...

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Meet the Author

Amanda Heidt
Amanda first began dabbling in scicom as a master’s student studying marine science at Moss Landing Marine Labs, where she edited the student blog and interned at a local NPR station. She enjoyed that process of demystifying science so much that after receiving her degree in 2019, she went straight into a second master’s program in science communication at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Formerly an intern at The Scientist, Amanda joined the team as a staff reporter and editor in 2021 and oversaw the publication’s internship program, assigned and edited the Foundations, Scientist to Watch, and Short Lit columns, and contributed original reporting across the publication. Amanda’s stories often focus on issues of equity and representation in academia, and she brings this same commitment to DEI to the Science Writers Association of the Rocky Mountains and to the board of the National Association of Science Writers, which she has served on since 2022. She is currently based in the outdoor playground that is Moab, Utah. Read more of her work at www.amandaheidt.com.
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