Ooh! I just remembered, I know a science about this!!! Now, I’m just going off of memory from when I went to Outdoor Class as a kid, so I might get some specifics wrong, but here’s what I remember:
These little guys are called Pikas, and they live in the mountains around where I am in Washington State (and other places too, obviously, but I’ve only really *seen* them here), and in these pics they are actually collecting certain types of plants during the rest of the year that they Only Eat In Winter.
Why do they collect food for winter from species that they don’t like to eat the rest of the year? Because these plants have Tannins and other stuff in them that make them taste bad/possibly even make them toxic when the Pikas eat them Fresh… so the lil guys have figured out how to store them in special little chambers in their burrows, and to let the plants *ferment* all year, like we do with dairy products or alcohol! So by the time winter rolls around, all the gross tannins and stuff have broken down from fermenting all year, and the Pikas can live on their stores of delicious home-brewed snacks all through the winter until the better-fresh stuff grows back in the spring!
Isn’t that neat? They’re making Craft-Brew Hay for themselves, not unlike many Seattlites or Portlanders XD
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