Rutgers Professor Travels to Alaska to Study the Ice Worm

by KYW's John Ostapkovich

Most of us don't go any further than the back yard if we want to take a look at a worm but a Rutgers-Camden biologist goes to the ends of the earth for some of the strangest specimens imaginable.

Indiana Jones, meet New Jersey Shain, Associate Professor Dan Shain, that is, who's about to embark on a field trip to an Alaskan glacier in search of ice worms (photo):

"The conditions are just about as bad as it gets. We expect right around the freezing point, rain and wind. Anything better and we'll be happy."

Ice worms are thread-sized critters feeding on algae in an environment where conventional wisdom says they should not even survive:

"It turns out that these worms do not have the anti-freeze protein. Not sure how the ice worms are doing it. They're approaching it from a different strategy."

Once Shain thaws out from this trip, he's off to the Amazon to study another better fed worm that can grow to six feet long.