# Naked Mole-Rat vs Vampire Squid vs Magnificent Frigatebird: An Unkillable Wrinkly Sausage, a Squid From Hell That Eats Snow, and a Bird That Mugs You Mid-Air > One refuses to die. One refuses to be a real squid. One refuses to ever land. Three categories, one winner, zero editing. By someone who loves to compare irrelevant things. Daily matchup. ## Contestants ### Naked Mole-Rat (Heterocephalus glaber) Taxonomy: Mammalia > Rodentia > Heterocephalidae > Heterocephalus > The unkillable wrinkled hot dog that runs its colony like a beehive. - COOL - Survival with zero oxygen: About 18 minutes - COOL - Reaction to acid and chili pain: Feels nothing - WEIRD - Social structure: One queen, everyone else works (like a bee) - GROSS - Look: Hairless, near-blind, packed in dirt tunnels Photo: Javier Abalos, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heterocephalus_glaber_(6507320569).jpg ### Vampire Squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) Taxonomy: Cephalopoda > Vampyromorphida > Vampyroteuthidae > Vampyroteuthis > A deep-sea goth that is neither squid nor octopus and eats falling garbage. - COOL - Eye size: Largest eyes-to-body of any animal (~1 inch) - WEIRD - Defense move: Turns its arm-cloak inside out (pineapple posture) - GROSS - Diet: Marine snow: dead bits and fecal pellets in mucus Photo: NOAA / Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MBNMS_juvenile_vampire_squid_(49041024167).jpg ### Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) Taxonomy: Aves > Suliformes > Fregatidae > Fregata > An airborne pirate that mugs other birds and never lands on water. - COOL - Longest recorded non-stop flight (genus): About 2 months airborne - WEIRD - Courtship display: Male inflates a giant red throat balloon (~20 min) - GROSS - Feeding method: Forces other birds to vomit, then eats it mid-air Photo: Ron Knight, CC BY 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnificent_Frigatebird_(Fregata_magnificens)_(8082824944).jpg I went looking for three creatures with absolutely nothing in common and somehow ended up with a wrinkled hot dog that cannot be killed, a deep-sea goth that eats falling garbage, and a bird that earns a living by making other birds throw up. A rodent, a mollusk, and a seabird walk into a bar. None of them belong here. That is exactly the point. As always, I am judging on the only three metrics that matter: how **cool**, how **weird**, and how **gross**. Let us ruin some afternoons. ## The lineup, and why it makes no sense A naked mole-rat is a mammal that decided to be an insect. A vampire squid is a cephalopod that decided to be neither a squid nor an octopus. A magnificent frigatebird is a bird that decided water is for cowards. They share no habitat, no body plan, and no shame. Let us go category by category. ## Cool The **naked mole-rat** is functionally cheating at biology. It can survive about 18 minutes with zero oxygen by switching its brain over to burning fructose, the same trick plants use, while every other mammal would be brain-dead in a couple of minutes. It is highly resistant to tumors, it feels no pain from acid or chili capsaicin, and it can live past 37 years with a mortality rate that, rudely, does not climb as it ages. It is a sausage that forgot to die. The **vampire squid** has the largest eyes relative to its body of any animal alive: roughly one-inch eyeballs on a body up to a foot long. Scale that to a human and you would be staring out of two nine-inch dinner plates. The tips of its eight arms glow with pulsing blue light, because of course they do. The **magnificent frigatebird** has the lowest wing loading of any bird, with bones that make up only about 5 percent of its body weight. The payoff: it can soar for weeks. A tracked frigatebird stayed airborne for two straight months. It is basically a kite that hates commitment. ## Weird The **naked mole-rat** is one of the only truly eusocial mammals. One breeding queen, everybody else is a non-breeding worker, exactly like a bee colony except furless and underground. It is also a thermoconformer, meaning its body temperature just drifts with the room like a reptile. And its two front teeth move independently, like a pair of chopsticks bolted to its face, with about a quarter of its muscle mass packed into its jaws. The **vampire squid** is the sole surviving member of its entire order, a living fossil that is neither true squid nor octopus. When spooked it pulls its webbed cloak of arms up and over its own body and turns inside out into a spiny ball, a move the pros call the pineapple posture. The **magnificent frigatebird** male inflates a gigantic, glossy red throat balloon to pull in the ladies. It takes about 20 minutes to blow up and he keeps it deployed for ages, sitting there like a heart-shaped novelty pool float with a beak. ## Gross Here is where it gets good. The **vampire squid** does not hunt. It is a detritivore that eats marine snow: a slow blizzard of dead plankton, fish scales, and, yes, fecal pellets, which it lassos with two long sticky filaments, glues into a ball with mucus, and pushes into its mouth. Dinner is a booger made of falling poop. The **magnificent frigatebird** is a professional mugger. It chases other seabirds and harasses them until they drop or vomit up their catch, then swoops in to eat the regurgitated meal mid-air. The word frigatebird is basically a polite term for pirate. The **naked mole-rat** is a hairless, wrinkled, nearly blind tube that lives jammed shoulder to shoulder with dozens of relatives in a warren of dirt tunnels. It is not winning any pageants. But honestly, eating recycled poop-snow is hard to top, so the squid takes this round. ## Tale of the tape Cool goes to a three-way tie that I am breaking in favor of the mole-rat, because being unkillable beats being pretty. Weird is a genuine bloodbath; everyone qualifies for a restraining order. Gross belongs to the squid and its falling-garbage diet. So who wins overall? You know what they say: the house always bets on the animal that refuses to die. ## Winner: Naked Mole-Rat The **naked mole-rat** wins, and it is not close. It out-cools a deep-sea cephalopod by simply opting out of death: no cancer to speak of, no pain from acid, no oxygen required for nearly 20 minutes, and a lifespan that ignores the aging curve entirely. It out-weirds both rivals by being a mammal that runs its society like a beehive while keeping a reptile's body temperature and a set of chopstick teeth. It only loses gross, and losing gross to a poop-snow eater is honestly a flattering way to lose. The squid is magnificent and the frigatebird is a charismatic criminal, but the mole-rat is the only contestant that looks death in the face and says, not today, and also I cannot see you, and also where is the queen. ## FAQ ### Is the naked mole-rat actually cold-blooded? Sort of. The proper term is thermoconformer or poikilotherm: instead of holding a steady internal temperature like most mammals, its body temperature drifts with its surroundings, which is very reptile of it. The stable, warmish underground burrow does most of the thermostat work for it. ### Does the vampire squid actually suck blood? No. The scary name (Vampyroteuthis infernalis, vampire squid from hell) is all marketing. It is a gentle deep-sea detritivore that eats marine snow, the constant drift of dead organic bits and fecal pellets, which it collects on sticky filaments and binds with mucus. The only thing it drains is your appetite. ### Do frigatebirds really sleep while flying? Yes, though the famous EEG study was done on great frigatebirds, a close cousin of our magnificent frigatebird. They sleep in flight using one brain hemisphere at a time, plus brief whole-brain naps, totaling only about 42 minutes a day in the air versus more than 12 hours a day on land. Sleep-flying on 42 minutes is a power move. ## Sources - Fructose-driven glycolysis supports anoxia resistance in the naked mole-rat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28428423/ - 10 Things You Didn't Know About Naked Mole-rats: https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-naked-mole-rats - Naked mole-rat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat - Vampire squid - Animals of the Deep: https://www.mbari.org/animal/vampire-squid/ - Vampire squid: detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3479720/ - Vampire squid: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals-the-ocean/animals-a-to-z/vampire-squid - Magnificent Frigatebird Life History: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Magnificent_Frigatebird/lifehistory - Magnificent Frigatebird: https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/magnificent-frigatebird - First evidence of sleep in flight: https://www.mpg.de/10673637/frigatebirds-sleep - Frigatebird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigatebird Tags: Mammalia, Cephalopoda, Aves, Rodentia, Vampyromorphida, Suliformes, deep-sea, totally-random, cross-taxa Canonical: https://lamalo.blog/naked-mole-rat-vs-vampire-squid-vs-magnificent-frigatebird