Movement technology of "green glacial mice"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It seems that wherever you go, you cannot escape the mice. And not only the usual ones, which you all know, but also very mysterious and little-studied, which baffle scientists.

They live on frozen glaciers in Alaska, where researchers looking for microbes (long thought to be the only living organisms that can survive in harsh conditions) - found ice covered with small green "mice" moving on the surface of the ice.

Scientists were also struck by the fact that the "green mice" are moving in formation

- Is it Earth or Mars? Are they planning an invasion? What the hell is this?

That was the initial reaction of University of Idaho glaciologist Tim Bartholomaus, co-author of a new study recently published in the journal Polar Biology.

He was referring to the day in 2006 when he arrived on an indigenous glacier near the former mining town of Kennicot-McCarthy, Alaska.

What Bartholomew faced were hundreds of mouse-sized fluffy green eggs covered in ice.

He bravely touched one of them and discovered that it was a soft, mossy clod of mud.

Finding a lack of information about what it might be, Bartholomew called them "glacial mice" and decided to study them.

The first thing he discovered was that glacial mice were covered in various types of moss.

However, the second is what prompted the six-year study.

“ They do look like little mammals, little mice, or chipmunks, or rats, or whatever, running on a glacier, although they obviously run very slowly.”

Study co-author and wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert said they noticed the balls were in slightly different places every day.

Assuming that the cause was something like a wind pushing the tumbleweeds, they went down and attached a thin loop of wire to them, strung with identifying beads around 30 of them.

This was in 2009. They measured movement for 54 days, then left and returned in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and measured them again. The researchers found that the glacial mice were quite tenacious … And they were surprisingly well organized.

“We found that glacial moss balls move an average of 2.5 cm per day in a herd manner, first south and then southwest, and their movements are positively correlated with glacier ablation

Surprisingly, the dominant direction of movement of the moss ball does not coincide with either the dominant direction of the wind or slope, or the dominant direction of solar radiation.

After reaching a mature size, the glacial moss balls "live" for many years, probably over 6 years.”

Bartholomew said that this movement was like a school of fish or a flock of birds and defied the usual explanation.

With time they even changed direction and speed.

The only thing you can be sure of is that the glacial mice had to move around so that the moss on their stomachs received sunlight.

Perhaps movement and growth of moss is necessary in order to to feed them intestinal microbes.