With freezing temperatures of down to\u00a0minus 40 degrees Celsius\u00a0(minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit) and vegetation hundreds and sometimes thousands of meters below the mountain tops, the summits of the Andes mountains maintain an extremely harsh environment. <\/p>\n
So how did a species of leaf-eared mouse make this barren land their home? <\/p>\n
That is the question a team of scientists from\u00a0Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and the United States\u00a0are looking to answer after discovering 13 mummified mice at elevations above 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) in the Atacama Plateau of Chile and Argentina. Their discovery further proves the species is the world\u2019s highest dwelling mammal, according to the study\u00a0recently published in Current Biology. <\/p>\n
The mice, called\u00a0Phyllotis vaccarum, are commonly found living in the Andes mountains at lower elevations, all the way\u00a0down to sea\u00a0level.\u00a0In 2020,\u00a0a living mouse was recorded at the summit of Llullaillaco, a volcano with an elevation\u00a0of 6,739 meters\u00a0(about 22,110 feet) on the border of Chile. It currently holds the world record for\u00a0highest living mammal, said Jay Storz, co-study author for the new and 2020 studies. <\/p>\n
The discovery of the living mouse spurred Storz to conduct expeditions at 21 different volcanoes. The 13 mummified mice were found on the Sal\u00edn, P\u00falar and Copiap\u03cc volcanoes. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time that we\u2019ve found anything at those super extreme elevations, we\u2019re completely blown away,\u201d said Storz, a\u00a0biology professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to overstate how inhospitable these environments are.\u201d <\/p>\n
On the summit of these volcanoes, each breath of air only contains about 40% of the oxygen that is available at sea level, Storz said. The temperatures also rarely rise above freezing, and the wind forces are extremely strong, once recorded at over 116 miles per hour from a National Geographic weather station at 6,505 meters (21,342 feet). <\/p>\n
Furthermore, the environment has been described to be Mars-like. In 2021, NASA researchers had studied the environment in efforts to \u201cunderstand how the building blocks of life might respond to Martian conditions over time,\u201d\u00a0according to its website. <\/p>\n
Freeze-dried mouse mummies<\/strong> <\/p>\n While the conditions are not ideal for living creatures, they create perfect conditions for preservation, as the mice are essentially freeze dried, Storz said. In normal circumstances, mummified mice are hard to come by since most deaths are caused by predators. But high up in the mountains, the mice have no predators. <\/p>\n The researchers performed\u00a0radiocarbon dating\u00a0\u2014 a method that uses the amount of carbon from organism material to estimate its age \u2014 which indicated the oldest mummies to be no more than 350 years old, while some could have recently died, according to the study. <\/p>\n Storz pointed to previous reports of the rodent, where archaeologists had thought the mice to be used as a part of\u00a0Incan rituals. Since the samples are not as old as the Inca civilization (over 500 years), that theory has been ruled out. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still a mystery as to why they\u2019re there \u2014 why they would ascend to these extreme elevations \u2014 but it\u2019s also clear that they got there on their own,\u201d Storz said, who also noted that the team found evidence of active burrows at the high elevations. <\/p>\n The team of researchers are currently conducting research on 31 live-trapped mice, including the record-holder mouse, to attempt to understand how the species can survive in the extreme conditions, Storz said. The research will also include analyses of their gut contents to find what the mice have been eating. <\/p>\n A second theory is that plant fragments, small insects and other dietary resources are carried to the top of the mountains by the wind, Fabi\u00e1n-Ruperto said. <\/p>\n \u201cLife at such high elevations was believed to be impossible for mammals,\u201d Fabi\u00e1n-Ruperto said, who was not involved in the study. \u201cThese observations surpass previous records in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges, challenging what we thought we knew about species\u2019 survival capabilities.\u201d <\/p>\n Life finds a way in extreme environments<\/strong> <\/p>\n The leaf-eared mouse weighs an\u00a0average of 55 grams\u00a0(about 1.9 ounces). With further research, scientists are hoping to learn how the tiny mouse can maintain a steady body temperature at such high altitudes, when the rate of heat loss could succumb the mouse to hypothermia and death within minutes, Fabi\u00e1n-Ruperto said. <\/p>\n One main reason for the species\u2019 success could be its adaptability in higher altitudes, where the mice have been observed to be active during the daytime, instead of nocturnal like its lower-altitude counterparts, Storz said. <\/p>\n \u201cLife always seems to find a way no matter how hostile the environment might be,\u201d Storz said. He hopes this discovery illuminates how evolution can equip animals to live in environments originally thought to be uninhabitable. <\/p>\n\n With freezing temperatures of down to\u00a0minus 40 degrees Celsius\u00a0(minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit) and vegetation hundreds and sometimes thousands of meters below the mountain tops, the summits of the Andes mountains maintain an extremely harsh environment. So how did a species of leaf-eared mouse make this barren land their home? That is the question a team <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}