Busy as a Pika

by Judi Dressler

Title

Busy as a Pika

Artist

Judi Dressler

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

American Pikas are difficult to photograph, as they run super fast. But luckily they stop every once in a while to poke their heads over a rock, as this one did!

To prepare for the lean times, pikas save up food during the summer. A pika will collect a pile of extra wildflowers and grasses and lay them out in the sun. The sun's heat dries the plants so they do not get moldy. The plants are stored in the pika's den until winter. Pikas like it cool and live at the tops of very high mountains. I saw this one at the top of Mt Evans, a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado.

Climate change is a huge danger for Pikas and may cause them to go extinct, as they have nowhere higher to go as the weather gets warmer.

From National Wildlife Federation: "Despite their cuddly appearance, American pikas—the smallest members of the lagomorph group—are among North America's toughest animals. Pikas are one of the few mammals in the lower 48 states that can survive their entire lives in alpine terrain, the windswept no-man's-land above tree line. American pikas are believed to have evolved from Siberian ancestors that crossed the former land bridge between Asia and Alaska. They once lived across North America, but have been retreating upslope over the past 12,000 years. American pikas now live on high-elevation cool mountains west of the Rocky Mountains."

Photo taken on August 19, 2016, at the top of Mount Evans, Colorado

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Descriptive tags and keywords for this image include american pika, pika, pikas, american, flowers, weeds, ochotona, ochotonidae, ochotona princeps, fauna, animal, alpine, mountain, nature, rocks, rock, mount evans, mt evans, mount evans, mountains, colorado, rodent, cute, sweet. small, high altitude, burrow, den, mammals, mammal, animals, talus, critter, photo, photograph, photography, dressler, and judi dressler.

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September 13th, 2016

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