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Are actually that bright? Where I live they are very dim and green.
Ghibli even made a movie about them
I grew up calling them lightning bugs, and I’m so excited to see a thread full of people calling them the same!
In German, they’re Glühwürmchen (“glow worms”).
Interesting, interesting. We call the female lightning bugs here glow worms because they are wingless, but today I’m learning that is not the case for all species!
Also Glühwürmchen is a cute word.
Wait hold up, in Dutch we have glimwormen (“shimmer worms” ) but those don’t fly! They’re actual bioluminecent worms.
Aren’t German Glühwürmchen the same thing?
Glühwürmchen definitely refers to the flying variant. Might also refer to non flying species but I’ve never seen or heard anyone talk about any of those. The term is probably just used for any type of glowing insect, no matter if worm or bug.
Fireflies is a much cooler name though.
Anybody tries to kill you, you try and kill 'em right back.
Shiny
One of the cool things about living in Ohio for a couple years, didn’t exist in Texas where I was raised.
Also significantly fewer roaches. In my experience they’re more common in the south due to the warmer weather
Cocuyo is the name in Cuba 🥹
Tumbler has one of the worst comment layouts…
Bioluminescence is actual magic. I will take no calls on this matter.
“I cast 200 μg Luciferin.”
[Dice noises]
“Nat 15. Your abdomen glows and dims slowly and rhythmically.”
Pathfinder 2e literally has bioluminescence bombs that’s just jarred firefly juice that’s secreted by humanoid fey that resemble the bugs
Fuckin bio-lights how do they work
Eh, what fireflies can do is kinda the base level of that branch of the evolutionary tech tree.
https://gizmodo.com/glowing-deep-sea-squid-have-a-complex-form-of-communica-1842472534
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DE89YY7zCio
Humboldt squid skin is bioluminiscent, but roughly akin to a flexible lcd or oled screen, with many different ‘pixels’ capable of being set specifically.
They likely have the ability to communicate by basically displaying different patterns of different colors and brightnesses and translucency, sorta like a human walking around with a sandwich board made of lcd screens, which they can control with a phone app.
They may very well have an entire language they can convey via sequenced or at least specific patterns.
Spelling it without help is also magic, so I hear ya.
Magic exists but we call it science
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.
- Michael Scott?
- Terry Pratchett
Nah Pratchett is “just because you understand it doesn’t stop it from being magic”
Hell ya. Real magic is the feelings we felt along the way. Swimming in bioluminescent waters is one of my favorite life experiences
Nah, it legit is, though. Just because someone or most someones understand how something happens doesn’t mean it isn’t magic anymore. It just means that we have a hard magic system. We understand our magic so well that we’ve stopped seeing it as magical, but if you take a step back and take a look at the big picture it becomes clear that the world is magical, and everything around us is this amazing, often confusing, incredible tapestry of Wonder and awe. The world has just ground us down so much that we feel like wonder is strictly for children, that we’re not allowed to feel wonder anymore. Embrace the magic. Even if you know how it works.
Sometimes I stop to think about the fact that a tiny electrical impulse in my brain can cause my fingers to move and press buttons on my keyboard, which in turn causes larger, but still small electrical impulses to trigger a shiny rock we trapped lightning in to do an immense number of calculations, to send a stream of further impulses to my network router, which sends them on to another router, and another, and on and on, each step might go via a wire, or radio, or the flashing of a tiny light, or even bounce off of a satellite in space and back to another router, until it eventually finds it’s way to a server, which does huge numbers of further calculations, then sends impulses back to me, and also to other servers, via just as remarkable a route, which in turn send impulses down wires and optical fibres and bouncing off of satellites until one of those streams of impulses gets to your router, where it gets sent on to your shiny lightning rock, which performs many calculations and causes a pattern of light and dark dots to appear in front of you, which cause a series of tiny electrical impulses in your brain, that you perceive have meaning.
The natural world is filled with magic and wonder, but this is a magic we designed and built ourselves.
I like going deeper, just imagining the stupid number of atoms, interactions and things even someone with vast knowledge about don’t truly understand.
And to add more, I play games via cloud gaming, and even after thousands and thousands of hours with it, it blows me away all the time.
An electric impulse in my brain sends a signal to my finger which then presses a button on a device that sends a signal to another device, computer, then another device, router, then many many other devices along the way to the server centre where a computer reacts to that signal and changes something in a stupidly complex simulation, then the visual, audial and haptic responses are calculated and sent through all those devices back to my screen and to my experience it seems instant.
So many incredibly complicated things happening thousands of times every second and traveling thousands of miles back and forth and for hours on end with very few failures. It’s just astounding.I like to imagine what magic will be normal to future peoples. Probably most of what we can imagine and some extras.
Humans are bioluminescent, too! But it’s too dim for anything to actually be able to see, so it’s no fun.
Is that “article” trying to say we’re exothermic and thus glow in the infrared?
Short answer: no
Long answer:
In scientific terms, the glow comes from chemical reactions within our bodies. These chemical reactions besides generating energy and producing heat also produce free radicals – atoms or molecules that have a lone, isolated electron. That makes these radicals highly reactive setting off a series of energetic chemical reactions as they interact with various fats and proteins in our cells. The glow is produced when these reactions involve fluorophores – molecules that give off photons (elementary particles of light).
Growing up, they were indigenous where I lived. After I moved away, it was so surreal no not see random lights in the back yard during the summer nights.
these guys are great!
I was also blown away the first time I’ve seen bioluminescent bacteria on some strip algae…you would pass your finger by them and see the hidden binary encoded alien messages
I saw a few lightning bugs in my yard last year. My life goal have them consistently in my yard. Good thing this dovetails nicely with my other life goals of getting butterflies, bumblebees and birds in my yards
Make sure not to bag and toss all the leaves in the fall - leave a bunch in a pile in the corner of your yard. Thats where they like to stay at night
We got piles on my gardens which will get covered for composting in place for the rest of the year. Also our wildflower garden is pretty much untouched except a yearly mow to remove baby trees. So plenty of spots for bugs
Also, people are born every day, and some just go on with their lives never learning about random facts like these. Every day, someone is one of the lucky 10k.
Man, imagine seeing a field of fireflies IRL for the first time, if you had never heard of them before! That would be pretty mindblowing.
I knew about them but didn’t see them well into adulthood. It’s underwhelming
Your mum is underwhelming.
Indeed, she doesn’t shine at all
I feel like fireflies have to be pretty perfectly whelming? like on the level of a swarm of pretty butterflies: cool, but not that cool.
I don’t know man, I’ve seen an actual swarm of butterflies (it took days for them to fly through) and it was pretty fucking awesome.
I think it’s just because the only idea I had was from cartoons. They don’t exist where I’m from.
They are still eery and cool though.
Really? I’m a seasoned adult-er, and I still get a little flicker of wonder when i see those lights floating in the field behind my house on summer evenings.
You would not believe your eyes
When ten thousand fireflies
You already messed up on the second sentence man, its ten million, not ten thousand
We used to have so many of them when I was a kid. Their numbers are dwindling. 😭
Saw this just the other day here…
I saw that the other day too. It’s just that 35 years ago, everyone still raked their lawns. Same as 35 years before that.
We are in the middle of an insect apocalypse.
Remember when you were little how many fucking moths there were? Couldn’t keep the porch light on at night or they’d get in the house and you’d be finding moth carcasses all summer.
Now there’s just a few. Hardly see any anymore.
Same for house flies, and bees. I used to have to go and spray for wasps every spring, I don’t remember the last one I saw.
i tell this to people all the time and they do not believe me
Remember when you needed a bug shield to drive on the highway?
Yes and yes (to the person you replied to). All I’m saying is that that narrative seems to be coalescing around “it’s because people raked leaves.” Does that play a part? Probably. But there’s no way it’s just that. It’s far too pervasive to be “personal actions.” The root cause has to be systemic.
It’s not just the leaves, it’s humans fucking with the environment, on a macro and micro scale. But that’s harder to convey in a single panel
Agreed. But as someone who grew up with the Crying Indian, I am very wary of this kind of oversimplification. It was always, “make sure to cut the rings from the six pack of cans so the turtles don’t get stuck,” and not, “stop manufacturing death traps,” or, Primus forbid, “stop treating the ocean and waterways in general like free waste disposal.” It’s still being actively astroturfed to this day (see also plastic straws). Case in point: a few years ago there was an “accidental chemical waste discharge” into a tributary of a major regional river that is used as a water source for much of the area. This was posted about in a lightly trafficked regional subreddit where a “hot” post might accumulate a few dozen upvotes over the course of a day and a handful of comments. This one reached over a hundred comments within hours.
It’s only x gallons, the river moves y gallons every minute. Nobody would have noticed until the media made a big deal."
The same stuff is used in cosmetics and people put it on their face every day. It’s harmless.
And so on.
Messaging is important. The corporate class understands this. Hence trying to shift blame for every single systemic issue onto individuals. Plastic straws. You don’t have the right to swim in clean water. Plastic bags. Fuel efficiency. Overnight delivery. Vote with your wallet. Overproduction. Recycling. And now raking leaves.
Want all that in a single panel? Zoom out from the raked lawn and show the silhouette of a factory belching smoke into the air and vomiting waste into a river in the background.
Raking leaves, expanding suburban sprawl (and therefore lawns), and the over-use of poisons, pesticides and fertilizers.
It’s also humans continually expanding and building in previously undeveloped areas. It crowds out other species.
30 years ago it didnt matter if you raked your leaves because there were still plenty of areas for lightning bugs to migrate in from. But when everyone’s surrounded by miles of suburbs the lightning bugs have further to go for you to see them
People have been raking leaves the whole time, so that’s definitely not why.
Grasshoppers too. I used to fill buckets with them as a kid. I haven’t seen more than a few in the last decade.
The less I maintain my yard the more lightning bugs we get.
We do not maintain our back yard very well. I refuse to let these amazing insects disappear. We also seed for pollinators as well.
I tried to go this route with my small backyard. Unfortunately invasive vines (creeping Charlie and English ivy) got entrenched in very short order and outcompeted almost everything else. Pulling up the vines left nearly bare earth that eroded very quickly. If I ever get the money and the time, I’m going to have to add soil and seed and tend to it properly. For the time being, I left most of last season’s leaves (mostly oak) and put down netting is some of the worst areas to try and keep the wind from stripping it bare(er). I’m hoping this leads to better water retention and soil conditions, and not just hiding spots for more vines. 😕
If possible, spread some local seed packs for pollinators on the bare dirt. Should be able to find some for your region/state. Better than letting the regular weeds take over.
That’s the problem, nothing has taken over. It’s just bare cracked clay because the soil is gone. My target for seeding is white clover, which technically isn’t local but it’s been around so long it might as well be. I can’t let things grow too long unless I want to check for ticks every time I go outside. Clover seems to be a nice compromise. I’ve long ago given up the fight against dandelions, much to the neighbors’ chagrin.
The yard is unfortunately pretty far down the priority list, which is annoying because it’s probably one of the more satisfying projects once it’s stabilized. But lack of funds and spoons dictates the effort must go elsewhere.
Clover is a good choice. Nothing wrong with a nitrogen fixer.
The yard spray folks come around every spring offering me a deal because they are spraying all my neighbor’s yards. I’m the only yard with lighting bugs in the neighborhood.
A Silent Spring was supposed to be a warning, not a how-to.
I feel a little bad for the pest control guy that showed up at my house last spring. I majored in Biology, but did not graduate, my partner has their Masters in Biology and wrote their thesis on ecological damage from heavy metals.
Yeah, my yard looks a little unmanaged, sure, you can see bugs all over the milkweed, that’s intentional. My yard was visited by thousands of bees (and sadly) a dozen or so butterflies daily. Because we had the insects and native plants, we had lots of small birds, and becuase we had lots of small birds, we were lucky enough to have a local Cooper’s Hawk as a regular visitor nearly every day.
The guy offered to do indoor services for spiders and termites. I told him I don’t have any of those because I have a bunch of basement centipedes. He said he could spray for those, and I was like “Why? They’re harmless and they’re the reason I don’t have dangerous spiders and termites in the house”.
I never lived anywhere near them, never seen a bioluminescent creature in my life despite my wish to do so.
But when I was about 6 years old, I have a weird memory of my parents driving out to the deep desert with me and we parked off some dirt road and my dad got out of the truck for maybe a half hour. My mom seemed nervous. I saw a green light at the base of a bush about 15 feet away from the vehicle, just a tiny little bright green light, solid color, middle of nowhere.
I asked my mom what it was and she said “it’s a glowworm” and I asked if we could go look at it and she snapped “NO don’t go outside!” and I was absolutely boggled what was going on. My dad came back, they drove out of there without a word. One of those life mysteries we all have tucked away in our memory banks. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming, but it’s getting back there in years, probably was early 80’s now. (This was the Sonoran desert in winter, there are no “glow worms” out there, and no bugs generally coming out in the cold anyway. I lived there for decades, there are no bioluminescent critters there.)
Different areas have different lightning bugs too. The ones in southern ontario are not the same as the ones in the midwest US.
They have distinct blinking patterns as well. IIRC observing the pattern is one of the ways used to classify them.
and colours!
It brings me unimaginable sadness to know that my recently born nephew will grow up in such a region, when just a few years ago you could see hundreds of these guys in any given back yard
I lived most of my life in areas where fireflies were around, but they weren’t the bioluminescent type,
The house I moved to about 5 years ago is in the woods and 3 months out of the year these guys buzz around my front yard and I’ve even helped a few out of the house.
They never fail to bring a smile to my face.
First one of the year is always a treat. The. I remember how many there were as a kid and it makes me sad.
Please, switch to red outdoor lights if possible, and if you can’t do that, shade your outdoor lights so that it only illuminates specific areas. Fireflies are affected by light pollution.
Also, don’t rake your leaves, or if you do have to take, try to sequester them in an area on your property, (I’m currently using my leaves as “sunkill” for garden and flower beds.) fireflies lay eggs on leaf litter, if you dispose of the leaves, you dispose of the eggs.
I treat my yard as a natural meadow the best I can. I only mow once or twice a year and we’re slowly pushing out the grass previously planted. I dislike the look of a traditional boomer suburbia yard. I much prefer the wild look.
We don’t rake at all. I prefer to just let things do their thing and I’m also far too lazy to bother raking. We live in an area surrounded by woods.
We have snakes and foxes and hares that come out of the woods from time to time. A ton of birds. It’s perfect.
I wish I could let mine go, but there are city ordnances I have to follow. My “yard theory” is to break up the the whole lot with trees, bushes, flower beds, and garden plots, to the point that I can “mow” with just a weedwaker.
I hate blankets of grass so much
Leave your leaves in autumn!
We’ve been living at the same house for about a decade. We have a tiny tiny creek in our back yard with some unmowed area around it. Our yard is chemical free and we have tons of pollinators. We saw single digit numbers of lightning bugs for nearly the time we lived here. Never more than two a night and most nights none showed up.
The past few years we’ve seen an uptick. Not loads, but they seem to be making a small comeback. At least in our yard.
