Pikas eat yak poop to survive winters

No soup; go for poop

Animals adopt all sorts of unexpected strategies to survive, and pikas (a group of small mammals that live at high altitudes and are found in North America and Asia) eat yak poop to feed themselves during the winter, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by John Speakman and his colleagues. He’s a biology professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China.

These small, rabbit-like animals, often compared to Pokémon’s Pikachu character (and they also have a similar name, although Pikachu’s original design was actually inspired by a squirrel, according to the video game website Kotaku), can’t hibernate through winter when food is scarce, so they slow their metabolism and limit their activity, such as foraging. Because of that, they eat yak (aka Bos grunniens, a long-haired domesticated cattle found throughout the Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent) poop to get by on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, where temperatures fall to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 degrees Celsius).

“Lots of animals, including rabbits and pika, eat their own feces”, Speakman said. Such poop eating, or coprophagy, can help animals absorb nutrients they couldn’t digest initially from their food. “But eating the feces of other species is relatively rare”, he added.

Plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) live in high-altitude meadows up to about 16,400 feet (5,000 meters) above sea level.

Speakman and his team discovered this behavior by monitoring plateau pikas for 13 years using various techniques such as filming and implanting temperature-logging devices into the animals.

Yaks are abundant on some parts of the plateau, and their feces are likely easily digestible for pikas, having already passed through the yak’s digestive system. Munching on yak poop may help pikas spend less energy than they would forage for other food sources, according to the study. The dung may also contain otherwise scarce nutrients and water, which pikas also benefit from.

Pikas’ penchant for yak feces may also explain why they are found in higher densities where yaks are more abundant, even though scientists think the two species compete with one another for food.

“We are currently studying what other benefits might accrue”, Speakman said. “There are obvious potential costs as well, like exposure to gut parasites, so that’s probably why it isn’t a very common behavior”.

Source livescience.com