[5] They were discovered in a wide range of environments, which include level snowfields, steep avalanche cones, crevasse walls, glacial rivers and pools, and hard glacier ice.

They utilize setae, which are small bristles found on the outside of their bodies, to grip the ice and pull themselves along.

[10] In North America, the first ice worms species were discovered in 1887 in Alaska, on the Muir Glacier.

Enzymes in ice worms have very low optimal temperatures, and can be denatured at even a few degrees above 0 °C (32 °F).

On Suiattle Glacier in the North Cascades, population counts indicated over 7 billion ice worms.