Worker: Which animal which is white in winter and brown in summer lives throughout the Arctic and can trace its roots to an extinct animal that lived in the Himalayas?
Vulpes qiuzhudingi Vulpes qiuzhudingi is an extinct species of fox found in the Himalayas. It was primarily carnivorous. The fossils, dating from between 5.08 and 3.60 million years ago, were found in the Zanda Basin and Kunlun Mountains of Tibet. It was named after Qiu Zhuding, a paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The species is believed to be the ancestor of "Vulpes lagopus", the modern Arctic fox, which would support the "Out of Tibet" theory: namely, that a number of current arctic species trace their ancestry to species originally from the Tibetan Plateau.
Snow pigeon The snow pigeon ("Columba leuconota") is a species of bird in the Columba genus in the family Columbidae from hilly regions of central Asia. They are grey, black, pale brown and white birds, and two races are recognised; "C. l. leuconota" occurs in Afghanistan and the western Himalayas; "C. l. gradaria" occurs in the mountains of East Tibet and from East Nan Shan (Qinghai) to Yunnan. The birds forage in open country in pairs or small groups, feeding on grain, buds, shoots, berries and seeds. They roost at night on cliffs, breeding in crevices where they build untidy stick nests and lay a clutch of usually two white eggs. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated the bird's conservation status as being of "least concern".