Tundra Rat

Title

Tundra Rat

Artist

Jon Burch Photography

Medium

Photograph - Digital Capture & Enhancement

Description

King of the hill! This Marmot was photographed happily munching away on the high tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park in northern Colorado.

Marmots are sciurid rodents, closely related to both ground squirrels and prairie dogs. The marmots are the kings of the sciurids. All 14 species of marmots are true hibernators. During the winter their body temperature drops to a few degrees above zero. They don't keep their body temperature down all winter for they wake up every week or so for a peek and then go back into deep hibernation.

There are 15 species of marmots living in mountainous areas, such as the Alps, northern Apennines, Eurasian steppes, Carpathians, Tatras, and Pyrenees in Europe and northwestern Asia; the Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, Cascades, Pacific Ranges, and Sierra Nevada in North America; and the Deosai Plateau in Pakistan and Ladakh in India. The groundhog of North America is a lowland marmot. The similarly sized, but more social, prairie dog is not classified in the genus Marmota but in the related genus Cynomys.

Marmots typically live in burrows, often within rock piles, particularly in the case of the yellow-bellied marmot, and hibernate there through the winter. Marmots mainly eat greens and many types of grasses, berries, lichens, mosses, roots, and flowers. Most, like this fellow, are highly social and use loud whistles to communicate with one another, especially when alarmed.

Some digital effects were applied to this original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the FAA watermark.

Image copyright 2019 by Jon Burch Photography.

Uploaded

August 10th, 2019

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