FruitlessFetusSign upWelcome to the second trimester, marked by one of the strangest mammals alive: the naked mole-rat, a wrinkled, nearly blind, buck-toothed rodent about 8 cm long that lives in sprawling underground colonies across East Africa.
Naked mole-rats break mammal rules constantly. They barely regulate their own body temperature, feel almost no pain from acid or the burn of chilli, live past 30 years where similar-sized rodents last 3, and almost never develop cancer.
Most remarkable of all, they are eusocial, like ants or bees: a single breeding queen rules a colony of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of non-breeding workers, one of only a couple of mammals on Earth to live this way.
Meanwhile, inside you
Your fetus this week is developing their own fingerprints, and their vocal cords are forming, though it will be many months before you hear the result.