This is important to consider in terms of conservation, Jung says. “Pika who live in Kusawa have very little genetic flow with pika who live in Kluane Park,” Jung says. Pika even evolve different “dialects” of calls, with different accents among individual populations. This means there is very little interbreeding happening between populations separated by any significant distance. They do not like to travel into new territories and so are very slow to colonize new ones. This trait means that collared pika essentially form pocket populations, Jung says. “They’re very averse to leaving their rock piles.” “The life of a pika is measured in risk,” says Jung. Unfortunately, the plants they dine on grow in open alpine meadows, which means a pika must constantly be weighing the danger of being eaten against the threat of not having enough to eat. Pika are extreme “homebodies,” says Jung, preferring to stay as close to their talus as possible, where they are protected from predators such as red foxes, eagles and ermines. This means they have to begin to care for themselves - including finding their own home and building their own haypile for winter - “basically as soon as they are weaned.” While the babies are born blind and hairless, they grow quickly, Kukka says, and they don’t overwinter with their mothers. Pika mate in May, usually with the member of the opposite sex closest at hand, and give birth to two or three offspring after around 30 days, usually in mid-July, she says. Pika are territorial, asocial animals, says Environment Yukon wildlife technician Pila Kukka, and will chase off other pika who get too close to their homes, especially if they are of the same sex. Pika don’t hibernate, Jung notes, but remain active beneath the snow which covers their rock piles during the cold months, and so they have to work extra hard to get enough food to last them all winter in a relatively short period. Pika eat mostly grasses, which they collect in caches - called hay piles - and store away from the naturally occurring rock piles (called taluses) where they live. They act a bit like farmers, with specific “harvest seasons,” says Jung, which means the majority of their food must be gathered in the short alpine summer months, between July and September. Similar to northern-ranging Dall sheep and their more southerly cousins, bighorn sheep, collared pika and American pika probably split off from one common ancestor, becoming separate species as the distance between the northern and southern populations increased.ĭespite being absurdly adorable, collared pika are exceptionally hardy, resilient animals. It is closely related to the American pika, which inhabits a range spanning the Canadian Rockies all the way to New Mexico. Aside from a smattering in northern British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, the Yukon is where most of Canada’s collared pika reside, although the species is prolific in Alaska. While Pika appear to closely resemble rodents, they are actually members of the rabbit family, says Tom Jung, a senior wildlife biologist with Environment Yukon.Ĭollared pika are “from a Canadian perspective, a Yukon species,” says Jung. These little fellows grow to be between 15 and 20 centimetres long and weigh around 160 grams, around the same size as a rat. Pika are grey-brown in colour, with large, rounded ears, small eyes, long whiskers, chubby bodies and short, bobbed tails. What many super-nerds may not be aware of is that the very real animal, on which the famous pocket monster is based, lives right here in the Yukon.Ĭollared pika - sometimes called whistling hares, because of their distinct, bird-like alarm call - are small, mouse-like mammals that make their home among rock piles in northern alpine environments, specifically in boulder fields above the treeline. Anyone who is a fan of the classic Nintendo game Pokémon (or anyone who has been a child in the last 20 years) is familiar with the (fictional) electricity-shooting super-rodent, Pikachu.
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