I believe that everyone who travels to Tibet has seen the "big rats" running around on the grass, and the chubby ones are also quite cute.
But there are many people who don't know what kind of animal they are.
This animal is called "pika", and the reason why it is called is because it resembles both a mouse and a rabbit.
So is it a mouse or a rabbit?
The answer is that it is neither a mouse nor a rabbit, it is a unique "pika".
In terms of taxonomy, rats belong to the order Rodents and rabbits belong to the order Rabbits. However, the animals of these two orders actually have a common ancestor and can be regarded as relatives of each other.
Pikas belong to the order Rabbit. From this point of view, it is closer to the rabbit, and the mouse is a distant relative. However, pikas and rabbits belong to two different families (pika and rabbit). Rabbits are actually divided into these two families.
This animal is mainly distributed in China; in China, it is mainly distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which can almost be regarded as a highland endemic species. Outside the Tibetan Plateau, it is difficult to see them.
Pikas will dig complex holes to inhabit. People often say "three caves of cunning rabbits", and pikas have more than three caves. They live in grass, often with one or two dozen openings. As soon as the wind blew, it quickly fled to the hole; after a while the predator was gone, and it might not be able to drill out of the hole.
Although this small animal looks cute, people are quite disgusted with it. In the past, when "eliminating the four pests", people used to treat it as a pest beast and hunted it in large quantities. Until a few years ago, some parts of Qinghai were still organizing large-scale rat extermination operations.
People summarize several of the pika's great sins:
1. Compete with cattle and sheep for pasture;
2. Lead to the degradation of grassland. It has been found that where there are many pikas, grassland tends to degenerate;
3. A large number of holes are dug, resulting in soil erosion;
4, once the running horse's hooves sink into the pika's hole, it may trip the horse's leg.
So, in the past, people spent a lot of effort to eliminate them. For example, in order to protect the ecology of Sanjiangyuan, Qinghai Province has spent 230 million yuan since 2014 to kill these "pests".
It can be said that since the 1960s, the rat eradication campaign has lasted for more than half a century.
However, pikas are numerous and widely distributed. These rat extermination actions are often ineffective.
In recent years, some experts at home and abroad have come out to cry for the pika, believing that they are an important part of the grassland ecological environment and are not pests.
For the several crimes mentioned above, some experts have refuted them one by one after studying them.
1. Compete for forage. Experts have found that the food of large livestock and pikas rarely overlaps, but food competition is more intense on degraded pastures. Pikas eat a lot of "poisonous weeds" that cattle and sheep don't eat, and will also let more grass grow in the pasture;
2. Grassland degradation. Experts believe that the main reason for the degradation of grasslands is overgrazing. As for the pika, experts believe that the causal relationship is reversed, and it is the degradation of the grassland that causes the pika to live here in large numbers. When the grass is more dense, the pika is more likely to be preyed upon by predators, so there are fewer pikas in good grassland;
3. Soil erosion. Experts believe that the pika's hole can make the plant community grow better, but instead slow down soil erosion.
The last expert didn't say anything. But as more herders drive, fewer and fewer people ride horses.
Moreover, the pika is a favorite food of all kinds of predators on the plateau. If the pika is greatly reduced, these predators will also be hungry.
It was also found that some birds on the plateau, such as snow finches and brown-backed ground crows, would sleep in the pika's burrow at night, and the pika, like a hospitable host, would not contradict them. The two can be regarded as a symbiotic relationship. Without pikas, these birds would have a hard time surviving.
Of course, these ground-dwelling birds are not white, they can alert the pika and expel predators for the pika.
However, there is still a lot of debate around the pika. A few years ago, the Qinghai government was still organizing the killing of pikas on a large scale.
Do you think pikas are beneficial or harmful?