I was just searching around different things about mammals evolution tree, when I saw that there is actually a rodent called Pika, Now, I checked the soruce of the wiki, seems to be from a national park's website, I just wanted to make sure it actually is an animal.
My thought is, could this maybe be one of the reasons behind Pikachu's name?
Link to wikisite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pika