Nubulake Pika

The individual is medium-sized. The body length is 125-170mm. The overall color is lighter, sandy yellow with black. There is a circle of yellow hair on the neck behind the ear. The abdomen is lighter, light yellow. The soles of the front and back feet are hairy, and the claws are almost hidden in the hair. The area around the nostrils is black. The ears are short and round, with a very narrow white edge on the ear. It is a close relative of the black-lipped pika, and there is some confusion in appearance, but the black color around the lips of this species is not as deep as that of the black-lipped pika. The individual is much smaller than the black-lipped pika, and the frontal bone is not as protruding as that of the black-lipped pika. On the skull, there is no oval foramen in the frontal bone, and the incisor foramen and palatine foramen are merged into one large hole.

In China, it is only distributed around the Pangong Lake in western Tibet and extends to the Shigatse area in southern Tibet. Abroad, it is distributed in the Kashmir region at the junction of India and Pakistan.

Nubulak pika belongs to the nominate subgenus (<Ochotona>). It was previously incorporated into the steppe pika (<O. pusilla>), the gray pika (<O. roylei>) and the Tibetan pika (<O. thibetana>). Yu Ning and Zheng Changlin (1992) revised it and listed it as an independent species. Now it includes 3 subspecies. Whether it is established or these species are independent species needs further study. Nubulak pika is endemic to the desert and semi-desert of the Tibetan Plateau. The distribution area is not large.