yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Watch: Fireflies Glowing in Sync to Attract Mates | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music] The synchronous Firefly ranges throughout the southern Appalachian. It really is a pretty magical thing to see. I think people are just fascinated by fireflies, you know, especially growing up. A lot of people have experiences of catching fireflies in jars and looking at how they're doing their flashing. You know, looking at them real close may be it reminds them of their youth, and they want to bring their children out to experience the same thing.

Yeah, the sync Firefly can be distinguished from other species by its pattern of six flashes about half a second apart. It may look somewhat random at first, but when you get a high density of male flashing, the synchronicity of the dark period is very obvious. And then the flashing itself will become synchronous as the night goes on.

Generally, fireflies do have a similar appearance. Some are larger; the predatory ones tend to be a little bit bigger, and there's a really small species too called the Blue Ghost, and it's very small. But generally, they're a type of beetle, and so they're going to have this hard outer shell over their wings that they use to fly with. They usually also have a little bit of red and yellow markings right above their head.

So, you really do have to look at the flash pattern and some other morphological characters to tell the species apart. Generally, the habitat where we find Ptinus Carolinas is in these low-lying moist areas where there's kind of a relatively clear understory so that the fireflies can visually see each other. It also has to have somewhat of a closed canopy so that it can be nice and dark.

They typically start flashing around 9:30 or 10, but they do wait for it to get fairly dark. There is a couple of theories as to why they're synchronous, and the female really does need a large light input in order for her to respond. That's how she recognizes the correct species. So when she responds and the males then know that she's the right female, then they can reproduce.

There's lots of other things that are flashing, so they have to have this sort of Morse code in order to be able to know they're with the right [Music] species.

More Articles

View All
Fashion Brands You Wear As You Get Richer
The richer you get, the more the way you look changes. And in this video, we’re looking at what brands you start to gravitate toward as your bank account keeps growing. Welcome to Alux! So H&M is the store you walk into when you’re just starting to f…
Net Present Value: What Future Income Is Worth Today
Let’s talk about NPV. NPV is just the net present value of something. It’s when you say that stream of payments I’m gonna get in the future: what is that worth today? So a common example of this is you’re joining a startup company and you’re getting stoc…
STOICISM | The Power Of Judgement
In earlier videos, I talked about the things that are up to us and the things that are not up to us. In this video, I want to go a bit deeper into how we approach life by a powerful yet dangerous tool in our toolbox: our judgment. [Music] First of all, …
Tiny Fish Use Bacteria to Glow in the Dark | National Geographic
(Calming music) - I was in the Solomon Islands on a National Geographic expedition. We were working in a shallow reef, and we had a big blue light that we were filming fluorescent corals. One of the safety divers, Brendan Phillips, came up to me and just …
The Sea Otter's Enchanted Forest | America's National Parks
Just offshore, the shallow coastal waters are also a refuge for marine mammals, such as the sea lions that hang out on the rocks or hunt beneath the sea. Here, in their own enchanted forest, the kelp beds are several stories deep. [Music] There are seals…
Rounding to nearest ten, hundred and thousand
At a barbecue to celebrate the end of the soccer season, 1,354 hot dogs were served. Round the number of hot dogs to the nearest 10. All right, let me just rewrite the number: 1,354. Now let’s just remember our places. This is the ones, this is the tens,…