Instead of sticking to a glucose-based system, which is dependent on oxygen, when a naked mole rat is deprived of oxygen, it switches its metabolism so that its brain cells start burning fructose for energy instead of glucose.
Fructose can be turned into energy anaerobically – which means it doesn’t require the presence of oxygen to be broken down into cellular energy.
Until now, this anaerobic pathway was thought only to be used by plants.
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We Finally Know How Naked Mole Rats Survive Without Oxygen, and It’s Really Freaking Weird
That Odd Boy 