They are the natives of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, misunderstood by Chinese for decades, relying on the "power of one rabbit" to save millions of animals This is the unique species of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the plateau pika. In the past few decades, the plateau pika is especially not a good thing in the hearts of the people, because the high-quality grassland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau itself is not much, and the plateau pika is still crazy to drill holes, nibble on plants, and grow more At its peak, the number of plateau pika populations reached as much as 1.2 billion, and many people believe that they directly led to the degradation of grasslands and gave the plateau pika the title of "grassland killer".
In order to protect the few remaining grasslands, we once spent 200 million yuan to prepare to use scientific means to eliminate the pika, the role of chemical agents is indeed very obvious, in a short period of time to curb the number of plateau pika, but at this time, with the continuous development of science and technology, people found that the original plateau pika is just a "back pot man", the main culprit that really led to the degradation of the grassland, in fact, is overgrazing. On the contrary, the plateau pika is also a great contributor to the plateau ecology, as one of the indigenous people of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, according to fossil evidence, the evolutionary history of the plateau pika has been 37 million years, in the genus Pika is a very primitive one, in the process of uplifting on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, they gradually spread to the surrounding areas, as far as Japan, Europe and the Americas, from the altitude of 3200 meters to more than 5000 meters in the meadow area, can see their figure, from that time on, the plateau pika has been contributing to the ecological environment.
First of all, the plateau pika is very good at digging holes, and these large and small caves can play a role in improving the soil, just like farmers who want to cultivate land must first cultivate the land and loosen the soil. Although this plateau pika is not as good as the ploughing cattle or machines, but the power of hundreds of millions of plateau pikas to cultivate the land together, is not what the machine can do, these "small cultivated land machines" day after day to drill holes, although in the excavation process will indeed destroy part of the grassland, but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, often ploughing the soil can make the soil water penetration rate higher, delay soil erosion, but also promote the nitrogen cycle, is conducive to the recovery of plant communities. Although the plateau pika does eat some pastures and legumes, the average daily to eat half the weight of plants and grazing cattle and sheep are suspected of grabbing, but they will also eat poisonous dicotyledonous plants, to prevent the spread of "poisonous weeds", to a certain extent to reduce the possibility of cattle and sheep accidentally eat poisonous weed poisoning.
Plateau pika is the grassland most of the small and medium-sized carnivores and almost all birds of prey main predators, such as The Tibetan fox, weasels and falcons and other animals are its natural enemies, the image of a little to describe, the plateau pika on the grassland carnivores are like rice to humans, once the number of plateau pikas is insufficient, the total number of local carnivores will certainly be sharply reduced because of lack of food, the plateau pika can provide shelter for other animals, the caves it excavated were originally prepared for the family, Used to hide from the cold climate and carnivores, some harmless small birds and lizards often borrow their nests, the temperature of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in winter is generally below minus 30 degrees, in such cold weather, most animals are facing serious challenges, even if the fur is thick, it is easy to die of low temperatures, the plateau pika has dug a large number of burrows in the grassland, and some of the abandoned caves have become sanctuaries for other animals.
As the environment gets worse and the weather gets colder, the animals can go directly to the pika's home to spend the night and thrive in these warm caves. It can be said that the cave of the plateau pika is like the last line of survival on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, open to any creature, the plateau pika, also known as the black-lipped pika, is a small mammal that grows food, mainly distributed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its adjacent Sikkim and Mudbor. In the territory of the mainland, the plateau pika mainly inhabits the alpine desert grassland at an altitude of 3000-5100m, meadow grassland, alpine meadow and alpine grassland, due to its weakness and no ability to counterattack. Plateau pika in the process of foraging and moving often pauses many times, once there is any wind and grass can stir their fragile nerves, and then it is a smoke to run back to the cave, some nerve bars or not enough cautious little guys, will become a carnivorous meal, plateau pika adaptability is very strong, do not look at its name with the word "plateau", think it can only live in the plateau, in fact, the plateau pika can pass, regulate the body's red blood cell backlog, overall content and red blood cell volume and other ways, Adapt to plateau and plains and even valley environments.
In other words, whether it is a plateau or a plain, as long as the sunshine time is long and the food is abundant, then the plateau pika can stand firm in a short period of time and grow rapidly, and these little guys can be seen everywhere in low altitudes. In addition, the plateau pika has a strong tolerance to low temperatures, not only can rely on increasing body heat production to resist the cold, but also through the social reduction of energy consumption, plateau pika is very peculiar, they are the only animals in nature found to have three kinds of "husband and wife system", some plateau pika population is monogamous. Some are polygamous and a few are polygamous, which is impossible to achieve in other animals, and perhaps because of this, the highland pika is extremely capable of reproduction. Under normal circumstances, they only give birth once a year, in areas with better environmental conditions and abundant food, the mother of the pika who is strong enough to have physical ability can give birth twice, and each fetus can give birth to 4-6, because the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau itself belongs to the most ideal growth environment for the plateau pika, so most of the plateau pika is twice a year.
At the same time, forced by its own lack of combat effectiveness of a cute big face can not let predators put them a way to live, so the juvenile plateau pika matures very quickly, in most cases 6 to 8 months to basically reach sexual maturity, if some pika families have more children, the cubs' desire to give birth is also very strong, it may be that the pika parents can directly hold their grandchildren in the year of childbirth. From the quantitative point of view, there is no obvious gap between the second child and the first child, but the survival rate of the second child is significantly lower than that of the first child, because when giving birth to the second child, even the strong pika mother is inevitably in a bad state, resulting in the physical health of the second child cub is obviously not as good as the first child, and because of the late birth, the number of the entire pika population at this time has been significantly excessive, although the plateau pika is a typical camp group life of the cave animal. The parent-child relationship is very close, and intimate behavior often occurs.
Aggression is also rare among members of the family, but the incidence of sibling conflict increases significantly with population size, leading to increased juvenile mortality. At the same time, the plateau pika gives birth to the second child in late June, and this time point is just the rainy period, too cold and humid environment can easily lead to the premature death of the pika cub, the plateau pika is the key species of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau alpine meadow ecosystem, this group of seemingly inconspicuous, even a little cute species. It plays a very important role in maintaining the diversity and stability of ecosystems, and once their numbers decline sharply or are exterminated, the entire Tibetan Plateau ecosystem may undergo fundamental changes. To this day, the plateau pika population is still depressed, if the future can not save the plateau pika in time. For the post-00s and post-10s, perhaps only from textbooks or museums can you see this small animal that brings a unique ecological environment to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.