2021年9月3日 · Yak poop is an abundant, easily digestible food on the Tibetan Plateau for rabbitlike mammals called pikas (shown). Dining on the dung helps pikas survive the hard winter months. The researchers caught pikas scarfing scat on video.

2021年7月19日 · These mammals endure the harsh winter by lowering their energy expenditure and, when possible, eating yak feces. Winter on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is unfriendly to pikas. Temperatures across...

2021年7月19日 · To survive the harsh winters of their high-altitude home, a fluffball-like animal called the pika becomes strategically lazy — and gorges on yak dung.

2021年7月20日 · New research suggests these small rabbit relatives—which live in mountainous regions in North America and Asia—survive the subzero winters of the Tibetan Plateau by supplementing their diets with undigested nutrients found in yak feces, scientists write this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers came ...

2021年7月19日 · The small, rabbit-like animals, often compared to Pokémon’s Pikachu character, can't hibernate through winter when food is scarce, so they slow their metabolism and eat yak poop to get by on ...

2021年7月19日 · Professor Yanming Zhang from Chinese Academy of Sciences said: “Our interesting findings illustrate that plateau pikas wisely exploit yak feces as a resource which overcomes diet shortage and in other studies we have successfully shown that this increases their chances of surviving the winter to 94-96%.”

Winter activity was lower at sites where domestic yak (Bos grunniens) densities were higher. Pikas supplement their food intake at these sites by eating yak feces, demonstrated by direct observation, identification of yak DNA in pika stomach contents, and greater convergence in the yak/pika microbiotas in winter.

2021年11月1日 · Does this fuzzy little creature make you say “Aw”? Well, its diet might make you say “Ew”! The rabbit-like animal is called a plateau pika (PEE-kuh), and it has a pretty gross eating habit. Scientists have discovered that these pikas eat yak poop to survive in winter!

2021年7月20日 · Individuals living in areas with high densities of domestic yak populations were also observed eating yak feces, which the authors confirmed via analysis of stomach contents for yak DNA.

These rabbit-like creatures are called plateau pikas (pla-TOH PEE-kuhs). They may be adorable, but they have a pretty gross eating habit. In a recent study, scientists revealed that these pikas gobble up yak poop. Yuck! The pikas live on the Tibetan Plateau in Asia. Finding food and water during the freezing winters there is tough.