'They Are Living Pretty Much In Our Back Yard'
Ben Lee, a biology major at the University of Puget Sound, got the ice worm bug after reading about them. "These worms are these little creatures that can live in ice," he said. "And there's really not much known about them and they are living pretty much in our back yard."
So Lee made the ice worm his research project and has collected hundreds of samples from glaciers in British Columbia and Washington State.
He has ice worms preserved in alcohol at the biology lab, including a few white ice worms not previously known to exist.
To find them he had to go to a glacier; and you don't just find them. "Then we had to dig six feet down to get to the glacial surface, where we thought they'd be hanging out," he said.
But white or black, why should you care about ice worms? "There is a possibility that they can offer some insight into how organs or living tissues can be kept alive at low temperatures," Lee said.
Ice worms hide at sunlight and are dead at 40 degrees.
"They are also canaries in the coal mine when it comes to climate change, because the glaciers are getting smaller and smaller and some colonies are shrinking and some are disappearing," said University of Puget Sound Dr. Peter Wimberger.
Most who hike in the snow never see the worms for the scenery.
Most don't shine lanterns at the ground. But, if they did, in the early morning or night, they might see them.
NASA is interested in research at Rutgers and UPS. The space agency wonders if ice worms could exist in the chilly world of outer space.