At last, we’ve reached the conclusion of this scintillating drama: the National Zoo’s naked mole-rat colony has chosen its queen. In case you’ve been living under a rock, let us catch you up: the Small Mammal House at the Smithsonian National Zoo is home to a colony of naked mole-rats, and for the last several months they’ve been engaged in a quiet—but brutal—battle for political supremacy. Naked mole-rats are one of just two eusocial mammalian species, which means they live much like colonies of bees or ants: one queen reigns supreme over everybody else, and challengers must fight and kill...