Ice Worms

Yesterday my little 2 ½ year-old darling girl was watching a cartoon series called Caillou. Suddenly she started trembling, watching the TV with wide, fearful eyes. I looked up, wondering what bloodshed my child was watching, only to see – a cartoon worm.

Yes, my little girl is "all girl". She loves anything pink, dresses, hair styles, and playing tea party. Sigh. This is the daughter of two biologists!

So, given her fear of worms, I will have to avoid places where worms tend to be found – compost bins, forest floors, rainy lawns, glaciers.

Yes, glaciers!

Believe it or not, there is a species of worm that lives exclusively in the ice of high mountain glaciers. Mesenchytraeus solifugus, better known as "ice worms", are found only in glaciers of the American Northwest. They have been found on at least 20 glaciers, between Alaska and Oregon. They will only venture a few meters into the snow around a glacier, and never beyond. How they were distributed between distant glaciers is a mystery.

Science website: http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/iceworm.htm.

A great video from Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Oregon Field Guide" episode on Ice worms:
http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/videos/view/51-Ice-Worms

Scholarly Paper: HERE

Sounds like something out of science fiction to me. These little buggers bore through the ice by excreting some sort of gunk from their head, rising to the surface at dusk and through the night, then descending downward in the daytime. They don't freeze solid despite living in ice. Instead they "boost their energy output" to stay warm. Above 40 degrees F they die. Below 22 degrees they freeze. They eat mainly algae, but also bacteria, fungi, or just about anything that will fit through their tiny, tiny mouths. In some areas, at dusk, they are so numerous that you can't help but step on them. Their life cycle is still a mystery.

Eesh. Don't go making any snow cones up there!

So the next time you make it up to the mountaintop glaciers of the Great Northwest, keep an eye out for dark squiggly critters in the snow and ice. I know my daughter will!

I'll leave you with "The Ice Worm Song", a song played during the Northern Manitoba Trappers Festival in The Pas, MB Canada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJhwDW8wQ9M.