Thanks to the funders of Peril & Promise for supporting PBS Digital Studios.
What do you get when you mix a potato… a guinea pig… and an alpine mountain climber?
The pika!
These lovable fluff balls are specially adapted to high altitude life, and just like their
habitat, pikas’ future is up in the air.
Pikas' mountain habitats are like islands in the sky.
And in the same way that rising water can flood islands in the ocean, rising temperatures
on land can flood mountains...with air, warm air.
That not only puts the heat on creatures that live there, it can destroy the habitats entirely.
As pikas’ favorite mountain habitats are flooded with warmer temperatures, these easily
overheated animals are able to spend less time out each day foraging, finding mates,
and defending the territory they rely on to survive.
That escalated quickly…
Think of these pikas like canaries in a coal mine; their health and survival serves as
an early indicator - in this case, for how climate change is affecting the living world.
They’ve experienced huge population declines in some areas, and researchers even predicted
they’d be one of the first climate-change-related animal extinctions.
But don’t worry!
They’re still here, and while pika problems may seem pretty different from people problems,
we could learn a lot from how they’re learning to take the heat.
Earth’s climate is getting warmer and weirder.
That’s affecting plants and animals everywhere in different ways.
One recent study found that nearly half of land mammals and a quarter of birds are already
feeling negative impacts.
Some of those species may not make it, but the ones that survive will be the ones that
can adapt.
We can see a lot of these changes already happening around the globe.
Certain plants have disappeared in one place as they follow their ideal growing conditions
to another.
For some animals, shrinking food supplies have led to smaller populations.
Other species, like some salamanders, are getting physically smaller with each generation
as a way to stay cool.
But these sort of changes can be slow.
They may take generations to play out.
You can adapt much faster if you change your behavior.
To keep cool, some pikas have moved to shady pockets in forests and on river banks.
In these lower or wetter habitats, they’ve replaced over half their usual diet of grasses
and flowers with moss, which is less nutritious, but plentiful.
Mountain pikas normally stay warm by puffing up into little fluffballs.
But thanks to the heat, some are using a new trick to stay cool, by stretching out their
bodies.
They’ve even figured out how to use wet moss as air conditioning.
Unfortunately, not every pika population seems equally able to adapt, and the populations
that can’t change their behavior fast enough are shrinking, or gone.
These pika problems may seem far away, but we humans are facing similar challenges.
People in certain parts of the world are facing the prospect of mass migrations as their native
homes experience unpredictable weather patterns or rising seas.
By 2100, it’s estimated Europe may face three times as many migrants as they flee
rising temperatures elsewhere.
Food may become less plentiful in places.
In Africa, reduced rainfall may cut crop yields by 50% in just a few years.
Extra heat will even make it harder to work and live in some places.
One study found each day warmer than 86 degrees costs Americans $20 in income.
We can learn from pikas: The quickest way to adapt to a warming world is by changing
our behavior and how we live.
Of course, we’ll also have to deal with other issues pikas don’t have to worry about,
like producing more energy without causing more warming.
Luckily, there’s one big thing we have that little fluffy mammals don’t: The ability
to know what’s happening, what’s causing it, and what we can do to change our behavior,
not only to adapt to the changes, but also to slow them down.
Our success–and the pika’s– may depend on it.
Funding for this episode is provided by these funders: P. Roy and Diana T. Vagelos, the
Marc Haas Foundation, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III in support of Peril & Promise, a public
media initiative from WNET in New York, reporting on the stories of climate change and its solutions.
Learn more at pbs [dot] org [slash] perilandpromise.