"Those little white flowers you see here are known as the Arctic mountain heather, and they are highly toxic to this little pika.
Collared pika create what we call haypiles under the rocks that will serve as food for the 9 months of winter they endure beneath the snow. That’s 9 months of dead rotting plants for fungi, bacteria, and other parasites to completely destroy. That is, unless the pika layers toxic species like this arctic heather through the haypile.
This particular species of flower releases its toxic brew of phenolic compounds into the the pika's cache of food as it begins to break down. Those very same toxins, it turns out, are a natural food preservative that kills the very fungi and bacteria that would otherwise ruin an entire winter’s worth of food for the pika. And amazingly, by the time the pika makes it down to these layers, those toxins are completely harmless to the little mammal.
None of this is by accident. Researchers have documented that not only are pika meticulous at how they layer toxic plants into their haypiles, they use different species, with differing levels of toxicity, at specific levels through the cache to ensure that their food is not only well preserved but also timed to be edible for themselves as they work their way through it.
This is the most sophisticated pharmacological knowledge and behavior ever documented outside of humans."
photo and text by jaredlloydphoto
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