Daurian Pika

Fascinating facts about the Daurian Pika

• A creature smaller than a tennis ball has survived on Earth for 30 million years while entire continents shifted. The Daurian pika — a rabbit-sized mammal weighing just 100–200 grams — belongs to an ancient family that watched dinosaurs die out and lived through five ice ages. Its rocky mountain homes in Mongolia and Russia are islands of survival, separated from other pika populations by hundreds of kilometres of unsuitable terrain.
• In summer, pikas harvest grass with the precision of farmers, cutting stems at exact heights and arranging them into 200-kilo haystacks called 'hay piles' — a winter food store equivalent to 1,000 times their own body weight. They work frantically for just three months, racing against the clock before snow buries their meadows. A single failed hay-making season means starvation.
• Unlike rabbits that flee predators, pikas defend their boulder-field territory with piercing alarm calls so loud they can be heard 100 metres away — a sound that warns every neighbour within earshot. Each pika pair carves out their own rocky domain and will fight intruders fiercely, their tiny bodies hardened by life at 3,000+ metres elevation where the air holds 40% less oxygen than at sea level.
• Mountain warming is erasing the Daurian pika's world in real time. As temperatures rise, their high-altitude grasslands dry out and shift upslope — but these small animals can only climb so high before they run out of mountain. In the last 30 years, some populations have vanished entirely, their hay piles left to rot in abandoned territories.
• Pikas are so metabolically efficient they don't need to drink — all the water they need comes from the grass they eat. Yet their tiny bodies overheat faster than larger mammals, forcing them to rest in cool rock crevices during the day and forage only in early morning and evening. Life in the thin air of high mountains demands a completely different schedule from the world below.

At a glance

About the Daurian Pika

In the rugged, rocky outcrops of the Mongolian steppe, the Daurian Pika moves with quiet purpose, its stout legs and sharp claws propelling it through a world of scrubby vegetation and scree. As it darts between boulders, its soft, woolly coat blends seamlessly into the surrounding landscape, rendering it all but invisible, except for the fleeting glimpse of a twitching whisker or a flash of dark eye. With a gentle, insistent determination, this small, enigmatic creature goes about its daily routine, gathering plant material for its winter stores, and weaving in and out of the rocky crevices with an effortless, practiced air.

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