Meet The 'Glacier Mice'

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2021

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

(Encore episode.) In 2006, while hiking around the Root Glacier in Alaska, glaciologist Tim Bartholomaus encountered something strange and unexpected on the ice — dozens of fuzzy, green moss balls. It turns out, other glaciologists had come across glacial moss balls before and lovingly called them "glacier mice."

NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce and Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong talk about glacial moss balls and delve into the mystery of how they seem to move as a herd.

Read more of Nell's reporting on glacier mice here.

Email the show at [email protected].

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.6	Hey everybody, Emily Kwong here and I'm joined today by NPR Science Correspondent Nell Greenfield
0:11.2	Voice.
0:12.2	Hey Nell.
0:13.2	Hello Emily.
0:14.2	So listen, I've got a quirky little mystery for you.
0:16.7	Oh, go on, I love a mystery.
0:18.9	So back in 2006, there's this researcher Tim Bartholomus and he was hiking around the
0:23.9	root glacier in Alaska.
0:26.4	He's a glaciologist at the University of Idaho and he was there just going about his work,
0:30.9	setting up scientific instruments, you know, pretty typical stuff.
0:34.3	When suddenly he was startled by something strange on the ice.
0:39.2	What the heck is this?
0:41.3	You know, I wasn't anticipating that.
0:43.3	What did he see?
0:44.3	Well scattered across the vast whiteness of the glacier were these bright green balls,
0:51.2	like dozens of them.
0:52.7	And around they're sort of like the size of small decorative couch cushions and they're
0:58.4	just resting there on ice and they're bright green in a world of white.
1:04.1	He was looking at balls of moss.
1:07.3	Moss balls?
1:08.6	Moss balls.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.