Nature
PUBLISHED
It’s a testament to the whimsy of Robert Pattinson that when a recent satirical social media post suggested he was obsessed with moss balls known as "glacier mice", the general consensus in the comments was: Yeah, sounds about right. Arguably one of the busiest movie stars in 2026, he’s become famous for his unique interviews ever since the iconic Piccolini Cuscino incident.
An enlightening Threads post from Mr Geoscopy (whose approach to combining real science with fake celebrity gossip is *chef’s kiss*) alleges Pattinson became “OBSESSED” with the moving moss balls “after being photographed reading a 2020 issue of Polar Biology backstage in Oslo”. Yes, it is really funny and at first I didn’t bat an eyelid either.
I can’t comment on Pattinson’s real feelings towards glacier mice, but what I can say is that the science behind them would surely make anyone a superfan.
Magical moving moss balls
Researchers have long been baffled by the existence of blobs of moss that appear in vast numbers around glaciers. The puzzling balls are a relatively rare biological phenomenon. They’re thought to form around impurities on the surface of ice, developing into ovoid-shaped blobs made up of dirt and moss.
The first strange thing about glacier mice is that they form moss across their entire surface. Weird because most plants wouldn’t survive being in contact with the ice like that.
A 2012 study about an expedition to Iceland's Falljökull glacier enabled scientists to figure out how this was possible. They performed a mini surgery on some glacier mice to insert an accelerometer that would track their orientation – because here’s the second weird thing about glacier mice: they move.
The results showed the glacier mice were rotating at least once every few days, which is pretty often for an inanimate blob. The scientists realized it was this continuous rolling that kept the moss alive. No one part ever had to be in contact with the ice for too long.
But it seems like we’re burying the lede here, right? Why are we concerning ourselves with plant survival when we still haven’t tackled how lumps of moss and dirt can move?
Knocked off your pedestal
As the authors of that 2012 study described in The Conversation, it all comes down to the tiny, icy pedestals glacier mice are often found sitting on. The pedestal forms because the ice ball itself reduces the amount of melting underneath them, and when they get big enough, the glacier mouse rolls off.
A never-ending cycle of pedestal-tumble sees the balls shifting around day after day, but where it gets even weirder is the direction in which they move.
That’s something we discovered in a 2020 study (and yes, it’s the Polar Biology one I’d love to believe Pattinson really was photographed reading backstage). As if glacier mice couldn’t get any more charming, it saw scientists effectively make friendship-bracelet identifiers for them out of wire and glass beads.
They do move in herds
Using the bracelets to track them, they monitored their movement for 54 days in 2009 and returned annually for three years. When they looked back on the data, it revealed that their movements weren’t nearly as random as expected.
The balls move at a rate of centimeters per day, but in a herdlike fashion. En masse, they shifted in roughly the same direction at about the same time, with changes in direction occurring that couldn’t be explained by the slope of the landscape or wind direction.
The study also found that glacier mice had a fairly long life, persisting for around six years in some cases. But as for how they move in herds? Well, that remains a delicious mystery.
Much like the fate of Pattinson's Piccolini Cuscino handheld-pasta venture...
