The trio borrowed a strategy usually used for tracking animals. In summer 2009, the team went back to the Root Glacier. They also wondered how long the moss balls survive on a glacier’s surface. And they wanted to know what might guide their movement. Bartholomaus, Gilbert and Hotaling were curious about how quickly the glacier mice traveled. Entire communities of tiny creatures develop and thrive inside these tangled balls of greenery.īut there were still many questions about the moss balls. Over time, the growing moss forms an oval ball. Most suspect the balls form when airborne moss spores gain a foothold on a small rock or similar debris. Only a few other scientists have studied such moss balls.

To learn more about what was happening, they teamed up with glacial biologist Scott Hotaling at Washington State University in Pullman. The potato-shaped moss clumps seemed to move across the ice. They had seen the moss balls on visits to the Root Glacier in southeast Alaska. Glacier scientist Tim Bartholomaus and wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert both work at the University of Idaho in Moscow. The question remains: Why? Scientists Say: Glacier Now, in a surprise finding, scientists have discovered that the moss balls move across the ice together, like a herd. What’s fuzzy, lives on a glacier and migrates but isn’t an animal? Answer: Oval balls of moss, nicknamed “glacier mice.” Such moss balls can be found scattered across a few of the world’s glaciers in places such as Iceland and Alaska.

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