This story is about a creature with a head like a furry shovel, and a body about the size of a sneaker. By rodent standards, the sandy blind mole rat is huge. But it’s special for another reason too. The sandy blind mole rat is found only in a small area of Ukraine, near the front-lines of Russia’s war against its neighbor. And we wouldn’t know of its existence but for the efforts of a small number of zoologists who, over decades of war and repression, risked their lives working to establish the sandy blind mole rat as a distinct species recognized by science.

The Naked Mole Rat is a podcast by Libo/Libo. Visit our website: https://libolibo.me/  

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This episode was produced by Andrey Borzenko, Ilya Marritz, Anastasia Medvedeva and Lika Kremer. Our sound editor is Ildar Fattakhov.