Ochotona gloveri

Large pika. Average body length 187mm. Large ears, averaging 29mm. The fur color varies among different subspecies. The brightest belongs to the species distributed in the Sanjiangyuan area of ​​Qinghai Province (O. gloveri brookei), with bright reddish brown fur throughout the body. The back of the subspecies in Yunnan and Sichuan is gray-brown. The belly is grayish white. The back of the front and back feet is white. There is a tuft of long white hair at the base of the ear. The skull features separate incisor and palatine foramina, and an oval foramen on the frontal bone.

It is endemic to China. It is only distributed in Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet and Qinghai.

It mainly lives in alpine grasslands.

The Sichuan pika belongs to the subgenus <Conothoa> and was once classified as a synonym of the red-eared pika. In Muli, Sichuan, a new subspecies (<O. gloveri muliensis>) was once named. Later, many people regarded it as an independent species. Liu Shaoying et al. (2016) confirmed through molecular systematics that it is still a subspecies of the Sichuan pika. The Sichuan pika is endemic to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and is mainly distributed in the rocky shrub environment of the dry river valley. It has a high altitude, with the lowest altitude of 1700m (Maoxian, Sichuan), generally between 2700-4200m, and the highest reaching 4500m. It is a key species in the dry river valley shrub ecosystem.

This species is listed in the 2013 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ver3.1—Vulnerable (VU).