How do pikas survive in the mountains? These tiny, round and incredibly fluffy animals live in some surprisingly harsh environments, coping with freezing winters, rocky terrain and predators. Their remarkable survival strategies make them far tougher than their cute appearance suggests.
Small, round and incredibly fluffy, pikas can look as though they belong in a children’s storybook. With their tiny paws, rounded ears and almost permanently alert expression, they are easy to mistake for some kind of mountain mouse.
But pikas are not mice at all.
They are close relatives of rabbits and hares, and they have evolved some remarkable ways of surviving in cold, rocky mountain environments. They don’t hibernate through winter, they don’t migrate somewhere warmer, and they aren’t protected by enormous layers of body fat.
So how does such a tiny animal cope with freezing winters, predators and life high in the mountains?
The answer involves underground rocky shelters, carefully collected piles of plants, warning calls and a body so well adapted to the cold that, surprisingly, heat can be a bigger problem than snow.
What Is a Pika?
Pikas belong to the order Lagomorpha, which also includes rabbits and hares. There are around 30 recognised species of pika, belonging to the genus Ochotona.
Most live in Asia, although two species — the American pika and collared pika — are found in North America.
Unlike rabbits, pikas have very short limbs and no obvious external tail. Their small rounded bodies, thick fur and relatively short ears give them their distinctive appearance.
Depending on the species, pikas can live in rocky mountain habitats or in grassland and steppe environments.
Some of the best-known mountain-dwelling pikas make their homes among broken fields of rock known as talus.
And those rocks are extremely important to their survival.
Why Do Pikas Live Among Rocks?
To us, a jumble of boulders might not look like particularly comfortable accommodation. To a pika, however, the gaps beneath those rocks can provide an entire network of shelter.
Pikas can disappear rapidly between rocks when danger approaches, helping protect them from predators such as foxes, weasels and birds of prey.
The spaces beneath the rocks can also provide a more stable microclimate than the exposed surface.
This becomes particularly important when temperatures become extreme.
A pika can forage in the surrounding vegetation and then quickly retreat into the safety of its rocky home.
How Do Pikas Survive Winter?
This is one of the most fascinating things about pikas.
Pikas do not hibernate.
Instead, many rock-dwelling pikas spend the warmer months preparing for the cold months ahead.
They collect grasses, flowers, leaves and other vegetation and carry them back towards their territory.
But they don’t simply eat everything immediately.
They make haypiles.
Pikas Make Their Own Hay
If you’ve ever seen a farmer cutting and drying grass to make hay, the pika’s behaviour may sound surprisingly familiar.
During summer, pikas repeatedly collect mouthfuls of vegetation and bring them back to particular locations among the rocks.
The vegetation is allowed to dry before being stored.
These plant stores provide food when snow and winter conditions make fresh vegetation difficult or impossible to find.
A pika may make an astonishing number of collecting trips while preparing its stores.
It is effectively stocking its own tiny mountain pantry.
And because pikas remain active throughout winter rather than hibernating, those food reserves can be extremely valuable.
Do Pikas Eat Their Haypiles All Winter?
Stored vegetation forms an important part of the winter diet of many pikas, although their exact behaviour varies between species and environments.
Snow itself can also help.
Although we might imagine a blanket of snow making life more difficult, snow can insulate the spaces between rocks from some of the most extreme temperatures above.
Pikas can therefore remain active beneath the snow and among the rocks while using their stored food.
It is a clever survival strategy: instead of sleeping through winter, they prepare for it.
How Do Pikas Protect Themselves From the Cold?
A pika’s thick coat helps retain body heat, while its compact body shape is well suited to cold environments.
Their rocky habitat provides another layer of protection.
Rather than spending all their time exposed to freezing wind and snow, pikas can retreat into sheltered spaces beneath and between rocks.
Their adaptations are so effective at conserving heat that pikas face almost the opposite problem when temperatures rise.
How Do Pikas Protect Themselves From Heat?
Pikas are specialists at living in cool environments, and that can make excessive heat dangerous.
On warmer days, mountain-dwelling pikas can alter when and where they are active. Instead of remaining exposed on hot rocks, they can retreat into the cooler spaces underneath them.
They may also concentrate more of their activity during cooler periods of the day.
This sensitivity to temperature is one reason scientists have taken a particular interest in how some pika populations may respond to climate change.
However, the picture isn’t identical everywhere. Different pika populations live at different elevations and experience different local conditions, so their responses can vary.
Why Do Pikas Squeak?
Spend time near a pika colony and you may hear the animal before you see it.
Pikas are surprisingly vocal.
They make short calls that can serve several purposes, including warning other pikas about approaching danger and communicating with neighbouring animals.
Some species also produce longer vocalisations.
These calls are particularly useful in rocky habitats where animals may frequently disappear from sight behind or beneath boulders.
A tiny pika sitting on a rock and suddenly producing a loud call can therefore be doing something quite important — communicating with the other pikas around it.
Are Pikas Social Animals?
It depends on the species.
Pika social systems vary considerably. Some species are territorial and spend much of their lives defending individual areas, while others can live in more social arrangements.
Even territorial pikas still need to communicate.
Calls can help neighbouring animals know who is nearby without requiring them to constantly confront one another.
Their haypiles can also be valuable resources, which gives a pika another reason to pay close attention to visitors entering its territory.
What Do Pikas Eat?
Pikas are herbivores, eating a wide variety of vegetation.
Depending on what grows in their habitat, their diet can include grasses, leaves, flowering plants and other plant material.
One particularly interesting behaviour is that pikas don’t necessarily collect every plant in exactly the same way.
Research into pika food caching has suggested that they can be selective about the vegetation they gather and store.
That makes sense. If you have limited time to prepare enough food for winter, what you collect matters.
How Do Pikas Move?
Those tiny legs might not look particularly powerful, but pikas are extremely well suited to navigating rocky terrain.
They can run rapidly across rocks and disappear into narrow crevices when threatened.
Rather than relying on long-distance speed like a hare, their survival strategy is often about staying close enough to shelter that they can vanish quickly when danger appears.
Their colouring also helps them blend surprisingly well into rocky landscapes.
A motionless pika can be remarkably difficult to spot.
What Animals Eat Pikas?
Being small means pikas are potential prey for numerous predators.
Depending on where they live, predators can include weasels and other small carnivores, foxes and birds of prey.
This helps explain their alert behaviour.
A pika feeding outside its rocky refuge needs to keep watching and listening while it eats or collects vegetation.
If danger appears, the nearest crevice may be only a few quick bounds away.
Their warning calls may also alert other nearby pikas.
How Do Pikas Mate and Reproduce?
Pika reproduction varies somewhat between species and environments.
Generally, mating takes place during the warmer part of the year, when conditions provide the best opportunity for raising young.
Female pikas give birth to litters of small, dependent young, usually in a protected nest.
Some species may produce more than one litter in a breeding season, although factors such as altitude, climate and food availability can influence reproduction.
The young grow rapidly because life in a seasonal mountain environment doesn’t provide an unlimited amount of warm weather in which to prepare for winter.
Are Baby Pikas Called Pikachus?
Unfortunately, no.
Baby pikas are simply young pikas, although you may occasionally see informal terms used online.
There is, however, a fun connection people often make between pikas and Pikachu, the Pokémon character.
Pikachu’s name comes from Japanese wordplay rather than simply meaning “pika,” and the character isn’t officially just a pika. Nevertheless, the similar name and small, round, energetic appearance have made the comparison almost irresistible.
Are Pikas Endangered?
There isn’t one simple answer because “pika” describes many different species.
Some pika species and populations are doing relatively well, while others face much greater pressures.
Habitat change, grazing, human activity and climate can affect different species in different ways.
One of the most famous examples is the Ili pika, a rare species discovered in China’s Tian Shan mountains in the 1980s. Its limited distribution and apparent population decline have made it a focus of conservation concern.
This is why it is important not to assume that what is happening to one pika species applies to all pikas around the world.
Are Pikas Affected by Climate Change?
Pikas have become an important subject in climate research, particularly because many populations are associated with cool mountain environments.
As temperatures change, some populations may experience changes in the amount of suitable habitat available to them.
But pika responses are complex.
Elevation, snow cover, vegetation, rock structure, local temperatures and the particular pika species involved can all influence what happens.
Scientists therefore study individual populations rather than assuming every pika will respond in exactly the same way.
What makes pikas particularly interesting is that an animal famous for surviving freezing mountain winters can actually be highly vulnerable to too much warmth.
Why Are Pikas Important?
Pikas aren’t simply adorable mountain residents.
As herbivores, they are part of the food web and influence the vegetation around them. They are also prey for other mountain animals.
Their haypiles move plant material around their habitat, while abandoned stores can eventually contribute organic material to the surrounding environment.
And because some pika populations live close to the limits of particular temperature conditions, studying them can help researchers understand how mountain ecosystems respond to environmental change.
A Tiny Animal With an Extraordinary Survival Strategy
At first glance, a pika doesn’t look like an animal built for one of Earth’s harsher environments.
It is tiny. It doesn’t have enormous claws, powerful jaws or great speed. It doesn’t escape winter by hibernating or flying somewhere warmer.
Instead, it survives through a remarkable collection of smaller adaptations.
It uses rocks as shelter. It grows insulating fur. It learns the safest times to forage. It communicates with its neighbours. And while summer is still here, it works tirelessly to gather vegetation and create the haypiles that can help sustain it through winter.
Perhaps that is what makes pikas so fascinating.
Behind that round face and deceptively cuddly appearance is a highly specialised mountain survivor — an animal that has turned gathering grass into an ingenious strategy for living among the snow and rocks.
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