LIGHTNING BUGS, FIRE FLIES OR GLOW BUGGIES, whatever you might call them they are really cool buggies.They light up and they were awsome to catch when we were little.I still catch them every summer, and now that I have my own child, I go with her.....The one questoin I could never answer fo her was........ MOMMY WHAT MAKES A LIGHTNING BUG LIGHT UP??????ummmmmmmm, I never knew this answer for her.I knew some things like it was a chemical reaction in their body, and it was to attract a mate....Not like I really careeed much for the answer to it because when I was small we were too busy yankin their heinies off and putting that glowey stuff everwhere.And they were neat to watch fly around the house once we let them out of the jar, and BOY did my mom freak out when she would wake up and find little glowing dots all over the ceiling and walls in the middle of the night.hehehehe.
Well thats enough of that, back to the glow buggies!
Fire flies produce light from certain chemical reactions....Luciferin( a subtrate) combined with Luciferase(an enzyme),ATP(andenosine triphosphate) and oxygen.When you mix all these chemicals together you get Thomas Edison......LIGHT.....WE GOT LIGHT(Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in new jersey you know)LOL.(For you chem nuts you can now make your own glowey stuff, and for the rest of us,now mind you I have no clue what this stuff is, but it must be some awsome chemical to light a bugs RUMP!
Any way scientist have a few thoughts on how the buggies light up..... They light up by controling the oxygen to their lighted rear end( its called a phophotic organ)and the other thought of how they control their light is that they control the nerves going to their little light bul, sending off impulses(The fire fly is very efficiant in the way they use the light never wasting any of the energy it produces.
The larvea(baby fireflies) also produce light.......Scientist beleive they light up as a warning signal for potential danger coming towards them.It is thought the light is to warn preditors of a "yukie tasting" meal they would beThey tried this thory on mice and it seems to be that is what the baby bugs light up for......the mice DID not light the insect.
Lightning bugs light up for a few reasons........ They signal each other for mating reasons.The male will light up and the female will respond to him....The males are the ones that usually fly around, and the females are most times in the grass or hanging somewhere on a tree or something.The male will flash and when he is done if he has the attention of the female she will flash back until he finds where exactly she is.Another reason is for defense.They will signal danger........You ever notice when you get closer to one they start lighting up faster as they fly away....I hate it when they fly away, they always go up and not straight ahead.At least if they went straight you have a better chance of catching them.I hated jumping up after them, they went higher and higher, and I was no micheal Jordan, I cant JUMP that high.Id jump and jump swing my hands and arm in the air like some nut and never nver would catch one.I BATTED the heck outa them and killed half them byaccident, but that was no fun.Their buttocks wouldnt stay lit anymore, and they would just lay there on the ground, with its little legs all curling up around themselves.I felt bad for doing it cuz I only wanted to catch it, not kill it......*sniff...sniff*
The Lightning bugs babies usually live in old logs, around wet places like ponds streams and puddles.They eat other animals like worms snails orslugs.The lightning bug babies inject their food with something along the lines of a pain killer and then......CHOMP CHOMP away on ther new meal....The baby bugs(larvea are really ugly......you ever see them long brown skinny bugs inside old logs and stuff, it that one.Its head looks just like the adult bug but its body is kinda flat and looks like sort of a brown leather look.....ICKIE)
The adult lightning bugs dont eat animals like the babies do.....they eat the juice from plant, so if you think they bite they dont.They have a mouth like a straw and suck plant juice.Kind of like a sikle shape mandable(jaw mouth whichever).The way their mouth looks you would think they too ate others but they do not.They like their plants.
Lightning bugs are normally found in warm humid places.there are lightning bugs in The united states,Asia, and some other parts of the world, but i dont remember them.....hehehe.oh ya also you usually do not see them from the middle of the US westward, well south western.
Lightning bugs give off almost 100 percent of the light they produce.A household lightbulb only gives off about 10 percent of its energy as light.... Boy that alot of wasted energy for a light bulb.Maybe my mom shouldnt have yelled at me for letting all them lightning bugs loose in the house.....They were alot better at giving the energy off then the electric company, and they are way cooler then her stupid lightbulbs anyway.hehehehe
If you want to attract lighning bug, cut back on chemicals used in the yard, or dont use them anymore. Try to cut out the light, they dn=ont like light, thats why when you try to catch them when mom lets you out and turns on the porch light, you see them across the street, when you know full well you just had an army full in your yard a moment ago.They are usually active during certain times of night, like evening time.also, trees, bushes,grass, and plant attract lightning bugs.....as with some other bugs LOL, but this is somethings that will help in your hunt for the bug with the lightbulb booty. How it changed my life:Lightning bugs are really cool.They gave me so many memeries from when I was a child.Like chasing my sister with them cuz she was afraid of them(I was the tomboy of the two of us), my moms midnight screaches when she wake to find them everywhere, pulling the buggies heinies off and watching the light still glow, even though it was no longer attached to the rest of the bug,.........most of all I remember every summer when the first lightning bug lit up, I would run right into the house, find a jar, and go outside catching them, until I got tired of being bit by the misquitoes, and my mother would yelling wherre the calamine ltion at, so she could cover me with that wretched pink crap, to make the itching stop.Now I get to pass an age old tradition down to my daughter, catching fire flies(well at her age it more like reach out clap your hands together, and then cry when she realizes she just squshed it between her hands......hehehe).
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