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The hostile , snow - capped peak of volcanoes in the Andes are home to the world ’s high - dwelling craniate , new enquiry confirms . The finding that small mammal live 22,000 feet ( 6,700 metre ) above ocean level gainsay assumptions about the limits of vertebrate aliveness , researchers toldSciencemagazine .
In the past tense , scientists repeatedly found mummified mice keep in below - stop dead temperature in high spirits up on these peaks , but they did n’t know if the small mammals lived on the volcano upside or just visited them .
A live leaf-eared mouse (Phyllotis vaccarum) was spotted on the summit of Llullaillaco volcano on the border between Argentina and Chile.
" Mouse mummies have occasionally been describe in association with Incan ceremonial social structure and burial internet site at or near summit of several high Andean volcanoes , " researchers wrote in a unexampled study , publish Oct. 23 in the journalCurrent Biology . " It has even been theorize that the animal were used as part of sacrificial rite . "
But when the authors date the mummified folio - eared mice ( Phyllotis vaccarum ) , they found that even the most ancient ones were just a few century erstwhile — not old enough to have been transported there by theIncas . This raised the possible action the mouse lived there and had been mummified naturally by the cold , wry conditions .
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In 2013 , researchers climb up Llullaillaco volcano on the boundary line between Argentina and Chile blemish , for the first prison term , a springy mouse scurrying across a snow field at a record - breaking altitude of 20,360 feet ( 6,205 m ) . The team returned in 2020 and immobilise several more live mouse , include on the vent ’s top at 22,100 feet ( 6,739 chiliad ) raising , allot to a study issue at the time inPNAS . This was the high a craniate had ever been institute ( razzing soar higher but do not live at these elevations ) .
No plants can survive on the volcano ’s wind - whipped summit , and oxygen spirit level are 40 % lower than those at ocean level . But in the preceding three years , research worker have accumulate 100 of additional mummified and live leaf - eared mouse from Llullaillaco and other volcano taller than 19,700 feet ( 6,000 chiliad ) in the Puna de Atacama neighborhood .
" Such uttermost elevations were antecedently assumed to be completely uninhabitable by mammalian , " researchers wrote in the raw study .
A drawing of a gray leaf-eared mouse (Graomys griseoflavus) from “The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle,” published in London between 1839 and1843 and edited by the British originator of evolutionary theory Charles Darwin.
To show that the mini - mouse really did flourish this high up , the squad compared the genomes of computer mouse happen above 19,700 feet to mice living lower down and found the high - dwelling rodents were more closely related to to each other — but only slightly .
Even if the genetic difference was small , " it ’s really cool to see that they were intimately related,“Catherine Ivy , a postdoctoral researcher and comparative physiologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada , who was not involved in the study , told Science . " It helps solidify that these mice were in reality breeding and residing at these altitudes . "
Researchers also discovered rodent burrows above 19,700 feet . Together with the fact that specimens from the same peak were genetically like and equally rip between males and female , the results confirm that " summit mouse represent members of nonmigratory population and were not plainly transient sojourners , " the cogitation authors wrote .
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" I might add leaf - eared mice to my list of ' extremophiles ' normally hold for microorganisms,“Grant McClelland , a comparative physiologist and professor of biological science at McMaster University in Canada who was not postulate in the study , differentiate Science .
The mystery of the mummified mice may be resolved , but it remain unclear what leaf - eared mice eat and how they remain warm to survive their arctic habitat . Researchers go for to lick the puzzle by hit the books a dependency of mellow - EL mice they recently established in Chile .
you’re able to read more about the high - living mice atScience .
