A Pika in Sunrise

These pictures were taken in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park in the fall of 2008. In fact, these pictures are all of a single pika that I photographed for some time not far from the trailhead of the Palisades Lakes Trail.

This is the first of my two pika galleries.

An American pika eating plants on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
Look Ma, No Hands!
I had a number of opportunities to watch pikas eating on this trip to Mount Rainier and realized something I had never noticed before: pikas don’t use their hands when they eat. Many mammals will use their front paws to guide plant stems into their mouths, but pikas pick up the entire stem with their mouth and eat a little bit at a time until the entire stem is gone. In this case, the stem was so long that the pika chewed the middle first to break it into two parts and then ate each part separately.

This was one of those times that I really wished my camera could capture video, the still pictures don’t do justice to how fascinated I was watching the pika devour these plants without ever raising a paw.

An American pika with its mouth open on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
An American pika with plants in its mouth on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
An American pika on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
An American pika chews on plants on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
An American pika with a twig in its mouth on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
An American pika on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
An American pika on the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park
[ Home > Wildlife > Mammals > American Pikas ]
Send me an email at
Copyright © 2010 Richard Cameron
April 19, 2010