Pika
What is 4-7 ounces, 8 inches long and stores up 61 pounds of food for winter?
Pikas are small, furry mammals with roundish bodies, short legs, short round ears, and no visible tail. Pika are small in stature, but they're very hardy. They weigh just four to seven ounces! Their average length is about eight inches
Each foot has five digits and hairy soles that are good for gripping sheer rock. A Pika looks more like a guinea pig than a rabbit!
Pika do not hibernate, instead they spend the warm months busy gathering vegetation to sustain them through Colorado's harsh winters. As the vegetation is collected, it is spread on the rocks to cure in the sun, then stacked into hay piles and stored under the rocks. One study discovered their 'haystacks' of gathered goodies can weigh up to 61 pounds! These stashes may easily cover an area of 100 square meters and can reach up to two feet high. The volume of a hay pile is perhaps that of a bathtub, and easily 30 species of plants may be found in it. Using their chisel-like teeth, Pika cut vegetation from grassy meadows. Leaves and stems of grasses, forbs, and shrubs constitute 78-87 percent of the Pika diet. Clovers, sedges, conifer needles, and woody bark are also eaten. Biologists have learned that during just a 10-week time period, one Pika will make 14,000 foraging trips, as many as 25 per hour, to secure its food stash. To sustain their energy, the critters eat up to nine times a day!
Pika breed in early spring, producing two litters, of which only one survives. The mother Pika gives birth to an average litter of three young which are born blind and hairless. Young Pika grow quickly, maturing fully in six weeks, and establish their own territory by their first winter. They can live up to seven years and are a protected non-game mammal in Colorado.
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