The mysterious“ glacier mice”神奇的“冰川老鼠”

Jody Serrano

在一些冰川上生活著一种神奇的植物——它们会慢慢移动，而且是成群结队地朝同一个方向移动，就像一群鱼或一群鸟那样。

In some places around the world， youcan find bright green balls of moss （苔藓）scattered across glaciers. That picture isincredible all by itself， but what is trulyincredible is that this colony of moss ballsmoves all at about the same speeds and inthe same directions.

The glacier moss balls are commonlyreferred to as “glacier mice”. Each ballresembles a soft， wet and squishy （黏糊糊的） pillow of moss. Glacier mice arentnew and have been spotted in Alaska， Ice?land， Svalbard and South America. Scien?tists have known about them since at leastthe 1950s. However， despite knowing thatthese mysterious glacier moss balls exist，scientists still have a lot to learn aboutthem. One of the biggest questions is whythe mice， which can live for at least sixyears， move the way they do.

The glacier moss balls moved together.The researchers tried to explain thisstrange phenomenon in many ways. First，they thought the balls had rolled downhill，but later found that they werent goingdown a slope. Then， they thought the windwas blowing them in consistent directions.But when they measured the dominantdirection of the wind， that didnt explainit either.

And finally， they considered the sun，which melts the ice and may make theglacier moss balls move， but the directionof incoming solar radiation didn't alignwith the direction which the balls weregoing in. The researchers still don't knowwhy the glacier moss balls move the waythey do. Bartholomaus said that he hopesthat one day， future generations will “getto the bottom of these great mysteries”.

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What makes the glacier moss balls mysterious？

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