At an altitude of three kilometers, among the crevices of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, lives one of the planet’s most elusive and rare creatures — the Ili pika.


It is often called the “magic rabbit,” by analogy with the ever-rushing rabbit from “Alice in Wonderland,” and is also compared to the fictional race of Ewoks from the “Star Wars” film universe. However, it is only distantly related to true rabbits. Pikas are living fossils, relatives of hares that chose to stay small and compact. The Ili pika looks like a fluffy gray ball with a tiny tail and rounded ears that are shorter than those of a vole but longer than those of a baby rabbit. It has two large rusty patches on its neck, and this mountaineer weighs only about 250 grams.


This animal was discovered quite by accident only in 1983. Scientist Li Weidong was inspecting the grounds of an anti-plague station and noticed a nimble creature that science had simply overlooked until then. The new species was officially described only three years later.


After retiring, Li Weidong devoted all his free time to trying to encounter the mysterious animal again. He was helped by a team of volunteers who set up camera traps in all possible habitats of the Ili pika.


The mission was successful only in the summer of 2014: the pika was captured on camera installed in the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern China.
After reporting the find to various media outlets, Weidong called for the protection of this unique
representative of China’s fauna, since even the pandas living in this country,
which are a rare species, number just 1,600 in total, whereas the number of pikas is much lower.


By the most conservative estimates, fewer than a thousand of these cute animals now live worldwide. Over the past 15 years, their population has declined by 70%. The main reasons are climate change, melting glaciers, and the destruction of their natural habitat.


Today, this ghost of the Tien Shan is on the brink of complete extinction. Seeing it alive is practically impossible, so every individual found is a true miracle for biologists.