Winter on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is unfriendly to pikas. Temperatures across the barren, windy highlands routinely dip below –30° Celsius, and the grass that typically sustains the rabbitlike ...

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. The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), a ...