Plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in northwestern China have devised their way of surviving the cold months of the winter season. When other animals would either hibernate or migrate, these pint-sized, rodent-like mammals have an unusual strategy to survive the winter.
Experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have studied plateau pikas for over 13 years but have only recently found how these real-life Pikachus get through winters when temperatures fall to -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius).
Despite looking like the real-life version of Pokémon's Pikachu, the anime was styled after squirrels instead of plateau pikas. The word pika comes from the Japanese word for sparkling sound.
Plateau Pikas Eat Yak Excrement to Survive the Winter Season
The study, titled "Surviving winter on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau: Pikas suppress energy demands and exploit yak feces to survive winter," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is headed by biologist John Speakman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He and his colleagues have been studying plateau pikas for 13 years, enough time to accumulate data on how these tiny mammals survive the winter season as they neither hibernate nor migrate like the other animals.
According to National Geographic, the team found that plateau pikas slow down their metabolism and supplement their usual diet of plants by eating yak excrement, which contains undigested nutrients. This behavior is called interspecific coprophagy. Speakman believes that plateau pikas eat yak excrement to save energy and stay hidden from predators like the peregrine falcon and Tibetan foxes.
"Lots of animals including rabbits and pikas eat their own feces," Professor Speakman explains to Live Science. "But eating the feces of other species is relatively rare," he added.
In 2009, Speakman found half-eaten yak excrement inside a plateau pika's burrow. This made him question whether plateau pikas eat this or not. An analysis of their guts revealed the presence of yak feces.
To prove his theory, he and his colleagues analyzed the gut contents of over 300 deceased plateau pikas that were collected between 2018 and 2019. They found that 22% of the sample contained yak DNA.
But video recordings of a plateau pika eating yak excrement in 2017 and 2018 have become his solid proof that pikas engage in coprophagy. This explains why plateau pikas tend to be plentiful in areas where yaks live.
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What is Coprophagy?
Coprophagy and regurgitation have been reported in some animals, particularly in captured great apes, and even in some that have been socially reared and live in groups. Science Direct offers two examples of coprophagy in animals.
Bonnie B. Weaver wrote in Equine Behavioral Medicine that coprophagy is an animal behavior of eating feces. For instance, a foal eats its mother's feces for about three weeks, beginning when they were two weeks old. This behavior helps them establish a healthy intestinal microbial flora and is also common among adult horses.
On the other hand, in the 2017 issue of Gorilla Pathology and Health, the authors explained that the ingestion of feces is often classified as an atypical and unwanted behavior that brought problems among the great apes in San Diego Zoo. Experts said that the cause of this behavior could range from nutritional deficiency to psychological pressure of a confined environment.
As of now, scientists studying plateau pikas are studying further the benefits of coprophagy and its potential costs as this is an unusual way of surviving the winter months.
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