The area where the mice call home extends more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) above the world's highest human settlement. The air is thin, temperatures are blisteringly cold, and a desert ecosystem ensures water and vegetation are extremely scarce.
In 2020, Storz led a team of mountaineering scientists who recorded Andean leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum) at a record-breaking altitude of 22,110 feet (6,739 meters). The mice were living on the summit of Llullaillaco, the world's highest historically active — now dormant — volcano, located on the border between Argentina and Chile.
Before the discovery of the high-altitude mice, researchers had assumed that mammals could only survive up to around 18,000 feet (5,500 m) above sea level. But these hardy animals smashed that record, while also thriving at lower altitudes.
To better understand these remarkable mice, the researchers studied members of the species at low, middle and high altitudes between 2020 and 2023. The work mixed mountain climbing and animal surveying techniques, with Storz and his team ascending the mountains and setting traps to catch and record the mice.
The expeditions can be dangerous even for experienced climbers: one of Storz's colleagues was evacuated during a separate expedition in Peru after they developed high-altitude pulmonary edema — a life-threatening form of altitude sickness that causes fluid to build up in a climber's lungs.
Storz surveyed the mice with other experienced mountain climbers. Here he is pictured with Mario Pérez Mamani and Franz Checca on the summit of Hualca Hualca in Peru. (Image credit: Jay Storz)Another change in the high-altitude mice's genes enabled them to digest food and detoxify plants that would otherwise be harmful to them, according to a statement released by McMaster University in Canada. This special adaptation helps the mice get enough food on the sparsely vegetated volcanoes.
Not all of the mice survived the researchers' study. To fully understand the biology of the mice, researchers needed to euthanize them and study their tissues. They also wanted to preserve "voucher" specimens to act as permanent representatives of the species in museums, which researchers can keep returning to for further study. According to the study, the team collected 167 of these voucher specimens.
"King of the mountains"
Study co-author Graham Scott, a professor of biology at McMaster University in Canada, said that the take-home message of the new research was how life can overcome such extreme environments, and not just survive but thrive. In this case, the mice did this by developing solutions for the cold, oxygen deprivation and food scarcity.
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But this begs the question: Are there any animals living higher than the mice?
"Birds are always a bit hard to nail down because, of course, they can fly and there's certainly records of birds flying at higher elevations than that," Scott said. "But we think this is probably the highest-dwelling animal."
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