Small, round, tailless relatives of rabbits with short, rounded ears, living on rocky mountain slopes in Asia and North America. They do not hibernate; instead they spend summer gathering "haypiles" of plants to eat in winter. Their high alarm call earned them the name whistling hare.
Quick answers
What is it?Mammal
Carnivore?No, herbivore
Dangerous?No
Domesticated?No
Awake when?Daytime
Hibernates?No
Kept as a pet?No
Do people eat it?No
At a glance
Found inAsia, North America
HabitatMountains
ColoursBrown, Grey
SizeTiny
Length15–23 cm
Weight120–350 g
Legs4
Covered inFur
Lives incolonies
Lives for3–7 years
In the wild
- Where it lives
- Cold mountains and steppes of Asia and western North America; the large-eared pika lives above 6,000 m in the Himalayas.
- What it eats
- Grasses, flowers, sedges, shrub twigs, moss and lichens.
Did you know
Cuts and dries little haystacks all summer to eat through the winter.
An American pika can make over 100 trips a day to build its haypile.
For every 1 °C rise in temperature, pikas lose about 3% of their foraging time.
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