Natural History Wanderings

Conservation Magazine reports

You heard it here first: American pikas are the most adorable of all the lagomorphs. These rabbit relatives live in relatively cold places and prefer rocky mountainsides, which offer plenty of nooks and crannies to escape from the raptors that would make a quick meal out of them. Because they have a fairly low tolerance for heat, pikas have often been thought of as sentinel species when it comes to climate change. If pikas can’t do well in a certain ecosystem, that ecosystem is probably too warm overall. In some of the warmer parts of their native range, they’re already extirpated. But these hardy creatures just might have a few tricks up their sleeves, according to a new study. In some places they very well may go locally extinct, but 100 years from now we can still expect some pika to cling to existence.

Read full story at  Pikas have some fight in them yet – Conservation