Category: Mammals
This species of pika is active during the daytime and found in the mountains of Western North America. They are small, herbivorous cousins of rabbits and hares. They can often be seen inhabiting piles of rock in alpine areas and eat a wide variety of green plants including grasses, thistles, sedges, and fireweed. When caching food for winter they stay very busy, making upwards of 100 trips a day gathering plant material for their dens. They are quite selective regarding the nutritional content of the food they collect for storage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_pika
The Opossum Ain’t Playing
Many people associate playing dead with the opossum - that’s where the term “playing opossum” comes from, after all. But something you might not know is that when an opossum feigns death, it really goes all out! Not content with merely closing its eyes and laying down, the opossum begins drooling profusely as if ill or even rabid, releases a putrid, greenish fluid from its anal glands that makes it smell like a decaying corpse, and after losing consciousness may even mimic rigor mortis! This is quite the elaborate routine, but it isn’t conscious: when an opossum plays dead, it has actually gone into shock due to stress.
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