Sascha is a U.K.-based trainee staff writer at Live Science. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Southampton in England and a master’s degree in science communication from Imperial College London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and the health website Zoe.
The hostile, snow-capped tops of volcanoes in the Andes are home to the world's highest-dwelling vertebrates, new research confirms. The finding that small mammals live 22,000 feet above sea level challenges assumptions about the limits of vertebrate life, researchers told Science magazine.
"Mouse mummies have occasionally been discovered in association with Incan ceremonial structures and burial sites at or near summits of several high Andean volcanoes," researchers wrote in a new study, published Oct. 23 in the journal Current Biology."It has even been hypothesized that the animals were used as part of sacrificial rituals."
No plants can survive on the volcano's wind-whipped summit, and oxygen levels are 40% lower than those at sea level. But in the past three years, researchers have collected hundreds of additional mummified and live leaf-eared mice from Llullaillaco and other volcanoes taller than 19,700 feet in the Puna de Atacama region.
To show that the mini-mice really did thrive this high up, the team compared the genomes of mice found above 19,700 feet to mice living lower down and found the high-dwelling rodents were more closely related to each other — but only slightly.
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