I think this quote may be key "because they live in deep desert burrows, mole rats have few natural predators." Having few natural predators seems to a commona

I think this quote may be key "because they live in deep desert burrows, mole rats have few natural predators." Having few natural predators seems to a commonality with exceptionally long-lives species. This made me wonder, do naked mole-rats have lower genetic diversity than other mammals? Turns out they do https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1990.tb03778.x https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... Seems to me it's likely that the more natural predators a species has, the more evolutionary pressure it has to increase genetic diversity. One of the ways to increase genetic diversity is to turn up the rate of aging, so you don't get some long lived individuals that keeps having children for ages. On the flip-side, with few natural predators, genetic diversity isn't as important and the rate of aging can be turned down.