Research overview: Pallass cat reliance on pikas and small mammals

Dietary studies portray Pallass cat as a specialist on small mammals, with pikas forming a major share of the diet across much of the range alongside gerbils, voles, and other rodents, supplemented by small birds and insects. This overview synthesizes scat analyses showing strong dependence on pika abundance in particular, which ties manul populations to the fortunes of these colonial lagomorphs. Where pikas are poisoned in rodent-control campaigns, manuls lose both prey and the burrow systems they shelter in. This close prey linkage helps explain the cat distribution and density and frames a key conservation concern, since large-scale pika eradication programs can simultaneously starve the manul and remove its shelter.