the.com/mole rat

means A nearly hairless, buck-toothed burrowing rodent (especially the naked mole rat) that lives in underground colonies, almost never gets cancer, barely feels certain kinds of pain, and ages in ways that make biologists deeply jealous.

from "Mole" traces back to Old/Middle English roots for the small, shovel-pawed digger we all know; "rat" is the common Germanic word for the familiar rodent. The compound "mole rat" is simply descriptive — a rat-like animal that lives like a mole, underground and nearly blind — applied to several unrelated burrowing rodent groups across Africa and Eurasia. The naked mole rat's scientific fame (pain resistance, cancer immunity, extreme longevity) is a modern discovery, not part of the word's origin, but it's why the name now carries so much extra weight.