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Glacier Mice

271 points - last Monday at 6:58 PM

Source
  • jameshart

    yesterday at 3:05 PM

    Huh

    > they have been observed in Alaska, Chile, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, Uganda and Venezuela

    Well, today I learned, Venezuela has glaciers.

    Then I googled that, and…

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/...

    And so today I learned, Venezuela used to have glaciers.

      • hammock

        yesterday at 4:15 PM

        Interestingly, the US has ADDED a glacier in the last 30 years, that of Mount St Helens, which was able to form after the explosion in 1980. It is the youngest glacier on earth

          • nsilvestri

            yesterday at 5:00 PM

            It had 13 glaciers pre-eruption, so perhaps "added" is doing a lot of heavy lifting :)

        • BenFranklin100

          yesterday at 3:25 PM

          We need to go nuclear with the newer type of plants. Built at scale, they are cost effective. Otherwise we are cooked, perhaps quite literally.

    • noncovalence

      yesterday at 3:44 PM

      Always love seeing a link to wikipedia.org on the front page. Pretty much guaranteed to make me go "oh, neat" :)

        • vismit2000

          today at 2:07 AM

          Related: https://www.orangecrumbs.com (nice weekly summary of top wikipedia posts on HN)

          • hrldcpr

            yesterday at 4:02 PM

            Agreed. I would follow a bluesky/mastodon/rss thing that shares every time a Wikipedia article hits the front page.

          • lostlogin

            yesterday at 6:03 PM

            When I used Kagi, my favourite feature was pinning Wikipedia to the top of all results.

              • yard2010

                yesterday at 7:47 PM

                Why don't you use it anymore?

                  • lostlogin

                    today at 12:48 AM

                    I'm not happy to have any of my money go to Russia (Yandex).

                    The number of US companies I support is usually queried, and I do avoid several of them too.

                    It's certainly tested my will more than more than I expected - Kagi is an amazing search.

        • enjrolas

          yesterday at 1:06 PM

          I did a bit of searching, and couldn't find a single timelapse of glacier mice movement. Time for a trip to the mountains with some cameras!

            • mettamage

              yesterday at 3:10 PM

              Volunteering as a potential random travel buddy here. I’m not sure if I have the time but let’s see if we can figure something out if you are potentially up for it. My email is in profile

                • enjrolas

                  today at 3:50 AM

                  Heck yeah

          • networked

            yesterday at 6:37 PM

            I have found a video (under a minute long) of a backpacking group walking through a herd of glacier mice in Alaska: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4fHfDrfoJw. I'd love to see a timelapse of glacier mice moving.

              • Aboutplants

                yesterday at 6:49 PM

                I’m actually surprised there isn’t Timelapse of it already. Seems like a simple enough setup to gather basically all of the information needed for finalizing how they move.

                • andrewflnr

                  yesterday at 8:07 PM

                  If you put me on that surface I don't think I would have any idea it was a glacier.

              • comrade1234

                yesterday at 11:45 AM

                Here in Switzerland when children order shrimp at a restaurant I tell them that they come from the shrimp mines in the glaciers.

                  • soupspaces

                    yesterday at 2:32 PM

                    If they don't know about tapioca pearls, please keep in mind they resemble fish eggs.

                    • nyanmatt

                      yesterday at 1:53 PM

                      [flagged]

                        • sanex

                          yesterday at 2:02 PM

                          It's ok they're just bugs

                            • nannal

                              yesterday at 2:05 PM

                              I use the same argument with dog meat.

                                • halflife

                                  yesterday at 4:10 PM

                                  You managed to talk with the dog from fallout 1?

                                  • NuclearPM

                                    yesterday at 2:32 PM

                                    Dogs are bugs?

                                      • ArekDymalski

                                        yesterday at 10:49 PM

                                        I would say they are features.

                                        • throwaway173738

                                          yesterday at 3:37 PM

                                          I think you’ll find that words have definitions that can be changed.

                                            • the_gipsy

                                              yesterday at 4:21 PM

                                                  #define bug dog

                                  • encomiast

                                    yesterday at 3:00 PM

                                    Aren’t we all.

                        • asmodeuslucifer

                          today at 2:18 AM

                          Slightly related, ice worms

                          https://glaciers.nichols.edu/iceworm/

                          • Aardwolf

                            yesterday at 8:18 PM

                            I clicked the picture first without reading any of the article and was wondering "where are the mice? they must be well camouflaged!"

                              • jtd_wakeseed

                                yesterday at 8:50 PM

                                same!

                            • kaffekaka

                              yesterday at 4:42 PM

                              jökla-mýs is a wonderful name, you gotta love icelandic. A swede might also associate it too "jäkla mys" - god damn cozy!

                              • glimshe

                                yesterday at 11:23 AM

                                TIL. Life never ceases to amaze.

                                  • davidjade

                                    yesterday at 2:01 PM

                                    Wait until you hear about Ice Worms

                                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_worm

                                      • dekhn

                                        yesterday at 7:33 PM

                                        And sailing stones, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones and toneballs https://luthierblogmartinahawe.wordpress.com/toneballs/

                                          • accrual

                                            yesterday at 11:10 PM

                                            I like how they installed a GPS module into one of the rocks to track its path.

                                        • grvbck

                                          yesterday at 3:30 PM

                                          Thanks to your comment TIL that snow algae is a thing

                                          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_algae

                                            • Aboutplants

                                              yesterday at 7:06 PM

                                              Another fun one is Mima Mounds, mounds found all over and especially in North America that don’t have established causes

                                              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mima_mounds

                                                • Rendello

                                                  today at 2:00 AM

                                                  From your article:

                                                  > "Mima" is a name derived from a Chinook Jargon term meaning "a little further along or "downstream".

                                                  To keep the random learning going, Chinook Jargon [1] is fascinating in itself. A few years ago someone on this site suggested a book called You Can't Win, an autobiography of a reformed hobo/thief/addict written in the 20s. It's fantastic, especially the audiobook version on Spotify. Googling now, I'm seeing it got a (poorly reviewed) movie adaptation this year [2].

                                                  Anyway, when locked in a British Colombia jail around the turn of the century, the thief/author used it to communicate with his Chinese cellmate [3]:

                                                  > A priest visited the jail one day and gave me a pamphlet on which he had printed the Chinook language. In answer to my question he told me it contained about three hundred words—nouns, verbs, and adjectives. It was created by the Hudson Bay traders, years before, and taught to all the Northwest Indians to simplify trading with the different tribes. […]

                                                  > One day he came in with a scared-looking China boy about twenty years old. “Yank, here’s a cellmate for you.” He locked the Chinese in, thinking he was punishing me. The China boy later proved the jailer’s undoing and my deliverance. He knew some Chinook, but not one word of English. I learned from the Indian trusty that he was held for trial, charged with stealing a considerable sum of money from his employer, and that his case was about as hopeless as mine.

                                                  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_Jargon

                                                  2. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1402593/

                                                  3. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69404/pg69404-images.ht...

                                      • alexpotato

                                        yesterday at 1:05 PM

                                        Also a reminder that a lot of life is basic physics and a simple state machine.

                                        e.g. even the development of eyeballs started with a slightly photoreceptive skin cell and then evolution hill climbing took care of the rest.

                                          • glimshe

                                            yesterday at 1:17 PM

                                            But that's fine too. If the complexity of the natural world is just emergent behaviors, then emergence itself never ceases to amaze. Because one wouldn't normally expect that our "cold" physical laws could lead to the variety of life.

                                              • chrisweekly

                                                yesterday at 1:42 PM

                                                I highly recommend the book "Deep Simplicity" by John Gribbin.^1

                                                It explores precisely this topic: the emergence of unexpectedly rich, complex behaviors from very simple rules given feedback and sensitivity to initial conditions.

                                                1. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/71851/deep-simplici...

                                                  • FabHK

                                                    yesterday at 2:25 PM

                                                    Another recommendation, with a biological slant: One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind by Nikolay Kukushkin.

                                                    https://nikolaykukushkin.com/book

                                    • ck2

                                      yesterday at 1:47 PM

                                      reminds me vaguely of "Sailing Stones"

                                      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones

                                        • dualarte

                                          yesterday at 2:21 PM

                                          > This suggests that this water buoyantly lifts the ice floes with embedded rocks until friction with the playa bed is reduced sufficiently for wind to move them and cause the observed tracks.

                                          Wow, that's nuts!

                                          • eleventen

                                            yesterday at 2:47 PM

                                            My first thought as well!

                                        • sooperT

                                          yesterday at 3:46 PM

                                          Dunno about you, but I was really hoping to see mice not moss :/

                                          • dburkland

                                            yesterday at 4:25 PM

                                            Remember seeing these in Iceland

                                            • joe-esquibel

                                              yesterday at 6:49 PM

                                              ...Poppa was a rolling stone...

                                              • trindell4469

                                                yesterday at 5:54 PM

                                                Am I the only one who immediately thought of tribbles?

                                                  • jb1991

                                                    yesterday at 6:25 PM

                                                    Yes

                                                • emirenesergin

                                                  yesterday at 4:59 PM

                                                  [flagged]

                                                  • aaron695

                                                    yesterday at 12:55 PM

                                                    [dead]