Living World / Unusual Organisms

Pazzo waded through the panicked birds to find out what was wrong. She found one penguin that hadn't fled. "It was sinking into the ice as if into quicksand," she says. Somehow the ice beneath the bird had melted; the penguin was waist deep in slush. Pazzo tried to help the struggling penguin. She grabbed its wings and pulled. With a heave she freed the bird. But the penguin wasn't the only thing she hauled from the slush. About a dozen small, hairless pink molelike creatures had clamped their jaws onto the penguin's lower body. Pazzo managed to capture one of the creatures -- the others quickly released their grip and vanished into the slush.

Over the next few months Pazzo caught several of the animals and watched others in the wild. She calls the strange new species hotheaded naked ice borers. "They're repulsive," says Pazzo. Adults are about six inches long, weigh a few ounces, have a very high metabolic rate -- their body temperature is 110 degrees -- and live in labyrinthine tunnels carved in the ice.

Perhaps their most fascinating feature is a bony plate on their forehead. Innumerable blood vessels line the skin covering the plate. The animals radiate tremendous amounts of body heat through their "hot plates," which they use to melt their tunnels in ice and to hunt their favorite prey: penguins.

A pack of ice borers will cluster under a penguin and melt the ice and snow it's standing on. When the hapless bird sinks into the slush, the ice borers attack, dispatching it with bites of their sharp incisors. They then carve it up and carry its flesh back to their burrows, leaving behind only webbed feet, a beak, and some feathers. "They travel through the ice at surprisingly high speeds, " says Pazzo, "much faster than a penguin can waddle."

Pazzo's discovery may also help solve a long-standing Antarctic mystery: What happened to the heroic polar explorer Philippe Poisson, who disappeared in Antarctica without a trace in 1837? "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a big pack of ice borers got him," says Pazzo. "I've seen what these things do to emperor penguins -- it isn't pretty -- and emperors can be as much as four feet tall. Poisson was about 5 foot 6. To the ice borers, he would have looked like a big penguin."

News of the penguin-eating ice borers drew more letters from Discover readers than any other piece in the magazine's previous 15-year history. Most readers were amused and elaborated on the hoax. A few were chagrined and chastised us. Here are the letters we ran in the June Discover:

My staff and I were extremely excited to read about the hotheaded naked ice borers in your April issue [Breakthroughs]. What an extraordinary creature! This would be a fantastic addition to our collection and would, incidentally, increase our membership at a time when, like all nonprofit institutions, we are struggling to keep our heads above water (or perhaps more appropriately, above the ice).

Naturally, in the world of rare animals, it is the first institution to display the unusual that receives the most benefit. Therefore, in anticipation of being able to display these creatures, our board of directors has already approved an outlay of $2 million for the construction of a special area to house them.

We would like to contact Aprile Pazzo as soon as possible to receive from her a full description of the animal's habitat, food, and recreational needs. In particular, we are hoping that the hotheaded naked ice borer can exist on something other than penguin. We had contacted the California Academy of Sciences in hopes of eliciting their cooperation on donating some of the weaker members from their penguin exhibit, but they were cool on the subject, to say the least.

We are looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible, and meanwhile we wait in 110 degree anticipation.

Shigatsu Baka
The Small Mammal Zoo and Discovery Center
San Francisco

I am a fourth-generation descendant of the great Philippe Poisson, mentioned in your April issue. I wish to express gratitude to Aprile Pazzo for restoring the reputation of my ancestor. I have in my possession his diaries, recovered from his last known encampment. Here is a translation from the French of an entry dated April 1, 1837:

"Saw three of the Creatures today but failed to capture any. If I do not deceive myself, I am the first person to observe them. Their repulsiveness is formidable."

Joan Walker
Indianapolis