Rare, Adorable Pika Photographed For First Time in Decades

If you went out searching for the Ili pika in the moutains of China, odds are your search would be fruitless. And that’s a darn shame. Seriously, look at that cuddly distant relative of the rabbit. Sadly, Ili pikas are “vulnerable to extinction" according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and as such, no one has seen the little critters for two decades. But last July, Li Weidong, the man who discovered the creatures in 1983, was reacquainted with an old fuzzy friend while climbing through the Tian Shan Mountains in central China. With his camera in tow, he made sure to snap the first picture of an Ili pika since Bill Clinton was president.