Gotcha! This Rare Mammal Finally Captured On Camera!

There are some animals that are considered cuter than others, obviously! No matter if they are wild or domestic. This tiny mammal was hidden by the people for so long! It has been discovered in 1983. This furry ball of cuteness is an endangered mammal closely related to rabbits and hares.

Meet the Ili pika (Ochotona iliensis), an endangered species that until last year, had not been seen in 20 years. The animal, occasionally referred to as the "magic rabbit," is even rarer than the panda.
It was first spotted in the Tian Shan Mountains in China, where it makes the holes and cracks of the cliffs its home. Despite other family of pika living across the Northern Hemisphere, these mountains are the only place this Ewok lookalike seems to feel at home.
The man who originally discovered the species in '83, Weidong Li, had a chance encounter with the elusive creature last year! He and a group of researchers were out in the Tianshan Mountains for, what else, pika spotting, when around noon they saw one and snapped the iconic picture above.
Discovered in 1983 and formally described three years later, the species had to wait another 10 years to be properly studied in its cliff-face homeland atop China’s Tian Shan Mountains in the northwest province of Xinjiang. In its 32 years on the record, just 29 individuals have been spotted, and it’s thought that the 2,000 or so adults estimated to exist back in the early 1990s has dwindled to less than half this, due to habitat loss and severely fragmented populations. A survey carried out between 2002 and 2003 turned up zero Ili pikas in 57 percent of the locations they’d been known to inhabit 20 years previously.
The Ili pika is one of the largest of the pika species, growing up to 250 grams and 20 centimeters long. Like other pika species, it’s evolved to live in cold climates, and makes its dens and burrows in the small crevices that cut into rocky mountainsides and cliff-faces. Pikas are known for the adorable peeps they make when they’re trying to communicate to each other, but for whatever reason, the Ili pika doesn’t seem to vocalize.

What a cute little fella! I hope they would do everything possible to save this unique species!

Source: Daily Mail

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