By Jim Knox
Wildly Successful: The American Pika
I didn’t think the view could get better. My friends and I had just trekked within sight of the summit of Wolverine Peak in Utah’s Wasatch Range. Gazing up from the basin, the Rockies were astounding, but at 10,000 feet the magnitude of the landscape and blue of the alpine sky eluded description. Before setting out, I privately dedicated the hike to the memory of a family friend we’d lost too soon. It was time to take in the wilderness, hear his voice at every vista and reflect on his legacy. Another friend and I were the last ones down the mountain. Our group had gone ahead while we savored the view on the descent.
It sounded like a bird call, yet something was different. We paused to identify the animal and waited a good 30 seconds without success before continuing our return hike. No more than 20 paces downslope we heard it once more. We paused again, determined to remain rooted to the mountain until we identified the mystery creature. Finally, the whistle-like call called our attention to the talus slope off my left shoulder. These boulder fields are common in mountainous regions worldwide yet the creature it harbored was far from commonplace.
With camouflage concealing the creature’s buff-gray form among the boulders, we waited for one more call before we could visually pinpoint the little beast.
“A pika!” I announced with the excitement of a little kid, and an index finger pointing in the direction of the pocket-sized mammal.
My friend was just as excited. Though we’d worked with some of the world’s most amazing creatures, the elusive pika was not among them. In fact, very few people have ever worked with, seen, or even know of the creatures.
The American pika, Ochotona princeps is a little-known and remarkable creature which survives where few others can. One of 20 related species worldwide which inhabit some of the planet’s most remote and inaccessible regions, American pikas are members of the lagomorph family, also comprising their larger and better-known cousins, rabbits, and hares. Although they resemble their cousins with large, rounded ears, they have no visible tail, and have protective fur on the soles of their feet. Adults may reach 4 ounces in weight and just 6-8.5 inches in length.
Pronounced, “Pie-Ka” these social and colonial animals inhabit mountain talus slopes near tree line from 8,000 to 13,500 feet in altitude. These habitats adjacent to alpine meadows afford food, cover, and protection. When the animal is absent, its presence is confirmed by telltale “haystacks” of flowers and grasses (some as large as a bushel) curing in the sun atop boulders. Due to the fact they do not hibernate, pikas employ this strategy during the brief alpine summer to cut and dry the vegetation for easy winter storage, sustaining them through the long winter months beneath many feet of snowpack. We humans borrow this ingenious method to preserve the nutritional value of plants while avoiding spoilage and the need for volumes of storage space.
Yet the pika’s behavior offers much more than helpful dry good storage practices. As one of the world’s mammals thus far identified as being ultra-sensitive to shifting climate patterns, they are the subjects of scientific behavioral study in their high-altitude range.
As a species which has evolved to require cool mountain temperatures, the American pika possesses a metabolism which cannot regulate its body temperatures above certain thresholds. Since they live at high elevations, such as the mountains and plateaus, pikas are frequently unable to migrate higher to seek cooler temperatures. Over the past decade, Mammalogists have seen a decline in pika numbers across their range in the American West. Loss of pikas from talus slopes affects other species due to their key role as a base species to their alpine ecosystem.
As indicator species advancing the threshold of alpine science, American pikas require more research. So, what can we do to aid these scientifically critical creatures, with the adorable distinction of looking like a cross between a hamster and a rabbit? It turns out that there is much that we can do as citizen scientists. Specifically, we can join in supporting the work of groups such as The Front Range Pika Project run in conjunction with Colorado University’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, or the Pika Poll run through partnership of the United States Geologic Survey and The Oregon Zoo. These groups apply emerging research to enhance survival for these tiny alpine dwellers.
Termed, “fascinating” and “charismatic” by scientists and citizens alike, the pika possesses the rare ability to both reach us—and teach us—on scientific and personal levels of caring. Every creature that roams our planet’s lands, flies across its skies, and swims in its waters, has something unique to offer us. We’d taken that hike beneath a blue September sky high in the Rockies seeking a glimpse of a Black bear or a Rocky Mountain goat, yet we were mesmerized by a creature half the length, and a quarter the weight, of my hiking boot. Though I learned much from our firsthand observation of these increasing rare creatures, just as significantly, it infused me with inspiration. I could feel my friend up there. I could hear his voice telling me, the pika needs the mountain, yet the mountain needs the pika.
