The secret behind the super fertility of slugs

A naked mouse can keep reproducing until it dies — and finally, an American-Canadian research group has figured out how it’s related.

The discovery is described in an article in the journal Nature Communications.

Lots of egg cells

By comparing naked mice to mice, the researchers discovered that the former are born with an unusually high number of egg cells.

After just eight days of life, a female naked rat has 1.5 million egg cells in both ovaries — 95 times more than a rat of the same age.

As if that weren’t enough, the female’s egg cell count seems to be increasing more every day.

Cornell endocrinologist Ned Bliss calls this discovery “rare”.

“It challenges the dogma established some 70 years ago, which stated that female mammals are equipped with a limited number of eggs before or shortly after birth, with no subsequent additions to the ovarian reserve,” he explains.

The researchers hypothesize that the lifelong fertility of nudists is a remarkable adaptation to their long lives and unique social structure, upon which nudists have organized themselves.

Namely, naked mice live in colonies like bees and ants, and as a starting point, each colony has only one queen who gives birth to young.

But if she dies, other females must be willing to step forward and take her place.

According to the researchers, this is probably why females that are not actively reproducing appear to keep copious amounts of gametes in their ovaries throughout their lives.

The researchers stress that more research is needed among older naked mice to see if the cells in their ovaries show signs of aging during the latter part of their lives.

But there is reason to assume that high fertility persisted for decades, according to the researchers.