Most pikas (a relative of the rabbit) have been forced to move to higher altitudes in hopes of escaping the effects of global warming; new research suggests the furry animals that live in rockslides at sea level get by from eating moss.
"Pikas eat foods like moss to persist in warming environments," biologist Denise Dearing of the University of Utah, co-author of a new paper reporting the results, said in a news release.
"Some fiber is good, moss is 80 percent fiber. It's a bit like eating paper," Jo Varner, also a biologist at the University of Utah and a paper co-author, added.
The moss is easily accessible to the pikas because it grows all over their rocky homes, minimizing the amount of time the animals must spend foraging in the sun.
"Few herbivores consume moss because it's so nutritionally deficient. These pikas set a new record for moss in a mammal's diet: 60 percent," Varner said.
The ability of the pikas to survive off moss suggests they may be incredibly resistant to climate change. Moss is not the only strange item on a pika's daily menu; the animals also ingest part of their feces for nutritional purposes (rabbits also do this).
"Pikas and rabbits--and their gut microbes--are the ultimate recycling factory," Dearing said. "They ingest low-quality food over and over again, and turn it into high-quality protein and energy. The end product is six times more nutritious than the moss."
The rabbit relatives are extremely sensitive to heat, and could die if they spend over two hours in conditions of 78 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.
The pika's heat sensitivity and global warming have not been a good mix; the animal is now extinct in Nevada, Oregon and Colorado.
In the study the researchers determined that the rock slides resided in by the lucky pikas were covered in between 60 and 70 percent vegetation. Sixty percent of the local pikas' diets was made up of moss; mainly hoary rock moss and big red-stem moss.
"This study represents the highest degree of voluntary moss consumption reported for a mammalian herbivore in the wild," Dearing and Varner wrote in a paper on the subject.
