August 12, 2021 • 48 mins
Whether called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glow worms, the tiny, bioluminescent bugs that light up the evening are universally beloved. Which makes their sudden and swift decline very distressing. Listen to find out how you – YOU – can save the firefly.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and
it's just the two of us, and we are here
today to present a Stuff you Should Know about fireflies
(00:24):
and lightning bugs, which are pretty much fun in the state.
I assume you're a firefly guy, right, I'm both evascillate.
I'm an I'm a vascillator. Really, I'll say it again, i'vacillate. Uh,
that's weird. I don't I don't know many people that
kind of interchange these. Well, I grew up in Toledo,
(00:48):
and I think that's where I picked up lightning bug.
And then down here in the South it's firefly. Right,
you got a backwards son. Well, then I picked up
firefly as a kid in lightning bug in the South.
That's it. Then, Yeah, it's it's I mean, I'm obviously
born and raised here forever. I just can't imagine saying fireflies.
(01:09):
It's just seems very strange to me. Yeah, it makes
you think of like um arsonists. No, it makes me
think of brown Coats and the TV show Okay, sure
that was a good TV show. Yeah, I mean that's
a good thing to think about for sure. But yeah,
that's the deal. Apparently in the South it's lightning bugs generally.
(01:31):
I think firefly out west and northeast, and then midwest
and south is lightning bug generally. Yeah, generally. I mean
there's pockets here there of weirdos who call them other
things like jack and stuff like that, but most people
see fireflies and lightning bugs is like a synonymous and interchangeable.
(01:53):
But apparently there's a group of firefly researchers that that differentiate. Um,
we're they use fireflies is like the umbrella term for
a few other categories. Right. Uh, there's the glow worm,
of which the ladies don't have wings and they have
a steady glow. They're they're big in the UK, huge
(02:17):
like big in size or just popular popular popular is
basically what I mean. They're like three ft long. Yeah. Uh.
And then you've got your daytime dark fireflies, which this
just get this out of here if you ask me, Yeah,
they don't even have light. So I even throw the
word firefly in there. They ruin it for everybody else.
(02:39):
That's the problem with using genetics for taxonomy, you know, right. Uh,
and then you've got your your flashing firefly, and that's
what we're kind of talking about here, which is the
lightning bug. Yeah, that's where it's interchangeable, the flash, flashing firefly,
lightning bug, one and the same. And we're not going
to be pedantic from this point on. But I felt
like that was worth pointing out. You know, no, I agree, Well,
(03:01):
we're going to be a little pedantic. Yeah, I guess
you're right. I forgot because fireflies aren't flies. Lightning bugs
aren't bugs. And this is there's quite a few little
facts of the podcast that you can know. This is
one of those, I think where people I don't know
a lot about lightning bugs, so they can always delight
their friends at their next backyard party by saying it.
(03:22):
They're actually all beatles, that's right, And everybody would be like, what,
Oh my god, you just won the party. Oh man,
I haven't won a party in so long. It's been
a while. I haven't been to a party, and so long,
even long before the pan the pandemic, I stopped getting
invited because you won too many parties. I guess I
can't have it was like having some Moan Biles over
(03:45):
for a gymnastics party. What. I don't get that one.
The goat thing. I don't get the goat thing. She's
the greatest of all time with the um, with the gymnastics.
I'm saying I'm the greatest of all times with party
winning with facts I was. I was. I have goats
that live across the street and I literally just fed them,
So my mind went to the animal. So I didn't
(04:07):
get it. Yes, all all about Simone Bile. She's great.
Take care of herself. I love it. Yeah, sure, um so, No,
I'm sorry that sounded like I was ambivalent. I agree
with you. I think it is because that she took
care of herself. I agree to Well you said the first.
Obviously you agree with yourself. Should we cut all that out? No,
(04:31):
I think that's stuffy. Should know gold. We haven't had
some weirdo exchange. Yeah, for a while. It's been a while,
all right, Can we get back to lightning bugs? For
the love of god? Uh, they're class Oh boy, here
we go. I'm gonna say the order. Uh, Cooter, I
think you just nailed it. You just won the pronunciation party.
(04:54):
What you want to try the family. I've been trying
to figure this out. I think it's lampirate A. I
think that's about right because piro like fire like the bright.
It could also be lampyra Day. It's one of those two.
That's what I'm staking my claimant. I'm gonna vacillate between
Lampyriday and Lampyriday all right, but all together in this
(05:18):
order and family there are here in the North American continent.
They're more than a hundred and seventy species and more
than two thousand worldwide. And they're always discovering more specie.
Not always, but they're still discovering Like every day. Uh,
they're discovering more species, so that list grows and grows. Yeah,
(05:38):
which is pretty cool, um, especially considering that they are
dropping like flies as far as anecdotal evidence is concerned,
including anecdotal evidence from me. Yeah, me too, which we'll
get to very disappointing. So um, the thing about fireflies,
since they're a beetle family, most of them are all
winged beetles. Almost all of them are that, like you said,
(05:59):
some like low worms are typically include females that don't
have wings, but for the most part, they have wings,
they fly around, and like winged beetles, they have certain
parts um in particular the electria eletra eltra, I would
say eletra or electra. Okay, And that is very cool
(06:19):
little closure that like they're like bay doors that open
and close on the back of the of the firefly
to allow the wings to spread out to take flight.
It's really neat. It's like a DeLorean. Yeah, it is
a lot or like a like the test last uv
Oh did they open like that? That's so showy. It's
(06:42):
pretty cool, though, Man, what is it about those doors?
I don't know, Yeah, I know. I also love the
old Lamborghini ones would slide open ever since I was
eight something about doors like that or just just tickle me. Uh.
And they yes, those those encase the wing and protect them.
And then they also have an encased head. It's called pronotum,
(07:05):
and that's the covering over basically the entire head. So
if you're looking on from a bird's eye view, you're
just gonna see no, you're gonna see any face. Yeah,
it's just like a like a protect covering. It's like
you know, Jerry only from the Misfits. It's like that
get up that he wears that covers the back of
(07:25):
his neck and head. I don't think I've seen that. Yeah,
and it has spikes, and I can tell you that
you meet has been impaled briefly on one of those
spikes that show that Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein invited us
to Madison Square Cards. Yes, but it definitely caught our
attention because those things are not for show man. The
(07:46):
spikes are very pointy and their metal. Yes, okay, I
didn't if it's like Guar and it's all like phone. No,
it's it's like Guar was apparently doing like a model
of what Jerry Only was wearing all these years. Yeah,
all right, how big are these things? What did we
settle on? I know you send an update because is
(08:07):
that just because it was incorrect? Because seven sixteenths of
an inch it makes no sense to anyone. Well, it
said that they range in size from like seven sixteenths
of an inch to nine sixteenths of an inch. I
think that's specifically like the big Dipper firefly. Fireflies in
general typically range from about a fifth of an inch
to an inch, typically like five to twenty five millimeters,
(08:29):
starting in about the size of a grain of rice,
all the way up to an inch. But there's some
that are like way bigger than that. Yeah, I mean
they can be. There are some that can be as
big as the palm of your hand. But um, you know,
here in the United States is good old American ones.
You know how big they are. They're about as big
as a you know, as big as a fingernail, that's right.
And when they fly around, they go do do do
(08:49):
do do do do do do do do do dude,
do do do do do do do. I'm gonna squirt
some light on you and you and speaking of them,
score lights. Just last thing about their body, the organ,
the light organ in their abdomen or tail is called
the lantern, which I think is love that. Yeah. So
where do you find besides backyards in the suburbs, where
(09:12):
do you find fireflies? Charles? Well, you can find them
on any continent except, of course, Antarctica. I feel like
we say that a lot, poor Antarctica. Um, they are
going to be in tropical regions, temperate zones. You're gonna
see them. Uh, it depends on what stage they're in.
The stage that we all love, the adult stage. It's
(09:33):
only a couple of weeks long when they're flying around
and lightening up their bellies. Um. But mainly and we'll
get to their life cycle. They spend most of their
time as larva on the ground in on the forest floor,
kind of near water, usually the larval stage. They look
like little almost like little dinosaur caterpillars. They're really interesting
(09:54):
looking and they look nothing like you would think if
you're used to seeing like these fireflies fly around. Yeah, especially,
I mean fireflies just seem so like mild mannered and
almost kind of dopey to some extent when they're flying around.
So now when they're in the rival stages, we'll see
there holy terrors basically. But you know, they have like
all sorts of different habitats. You can find them up
(10:16):
in the southern provinces of Canada. You can find them
in some arid areas as long as there is permanent water,
you could conceivably have um firefly populations and even like
just you know, perpetually moist areas too. It doesn't have
to be like a pond or something, but moist, like
real moist areas. Yeah, and you're gonna see them in
(10:41):
the humid summer evenings generally. Uh, in the south, it
can be hot all year long, so you can see
them some in the fall as well. And uh some
though like their outliers, Like you said, some of them
are really super aquatic, and some of them like never
come down from their trees. Uh. And these are the
ones you know, of the two thousand species all over
(11:03):
the world that we're talking about, right, And um, if
you were looking for a firefly show, the best seasons
that you're going to have firefly shows are after a
warm wet spring, or even during a warm wet spring,
and or after a mild winter because those larvae that
live in those marty areas, Um, we'll have higher survival
(11:24):
rates in a colder climate with a mild winter during
the over wintering period. All right, I think that's a
great set up. Sure, let's get Yeah, maybe we should
take a break and reveal to everyone what the heck
they're doing with those lanterns to begin with. Huh. I
think so, all right, we'll be right back. Okay, Chuck,
(12:08):
We're about to act as lucifer to all these people
because we will be bringing light to understanding of how
fireflies produce light using appropriately lucifer aise. Right, uh, and
I guess we can go ahead. And since I promised
a big reveal, they're doing all this to attract a mate.
They're trying to get down in boogie with another lightning bug.
(12:30):
That's why they're lighting up like that. Oh yeah, I'm sorry,
I forgot about the reveal and the one and a
half seconds between between your your cliffhanger and coming back. Yeah.
I wonder if people think if we leave for a
hundred twenty seconds, right and just go, you know, take
a stretch or whatever, and we just sit there in
silence for here, you won't let us talk. Um. So, yeah,
(12:56):
they're lighting up to attract a mate. And what they're
doing here, they have these specialized cells in their abdomen
to make that lantern light up. And it contains, like
you said, that chemical called lucifer in and it makes
an enzyme called lucifer aise. If if you don't want
to sound devilish about it, that would be a fine pronunciation.
(13:16):
I like lucifer in and lucifer aise, But they need
something else to write. They need oxygen to make that
thing blaze. Yeah, that and a dinas scene triphosphate or
a t P, which is that that chemically stored energy
that's found in basically all cells of all life everywhere. Yeah,
it's just kind of this ubiquitous thing that kind of
(13:38):
makes it's what powers life. So when it all kind
of combines where you have um oxygen and a t
P and lucifer in and lucifer aise the enzyme that's
produced by by luciferen um, this chemical reaction produces light.
There's a couple of byproducts oxy lucifer in, an adena
(14:01):
seen monophosphate, and then lights given off. And you would
think like, okay, light and heat. Sure that's the chemical reaction,
so it's going to produce some heat now, Absolutely not.
Here's one of those facts of the podcast. In my opinion,
they call the kind of light that fireflies produced, the
kind of bioluminescence that fireflies produced um cold light because
(14:25):
it is one efficient. No, none of that the energy
released from that chemical reaction is lost to heat. It
is all um. It just produces photons only. Yeah, and
that's why children can let a lightning bug land on
their finger and that little abdomen that lantern can light
up on their finger and they don't go al and
(14:46):
smash it. Yeah, try that with the sparkler. Don't do that.
It doesn't work. The light is the actual light, and
the wavelength is between five tin and six and seventy nanometers.
It looks yellowish to me. It looks a little greenish.
It's been described as reddish green, but it looks like
(15:08):
a yellowish green to me. It depends on the I think, yeah, yeah,
I think there's ones that even give off blue. Right. Yeah,
there's some around Asheville called the blue ghost firefly, and
from a distance they look blue, but up close, if
you catch one and hold it in your hand, it, um,
it's like a it's like a greenish thing. So it
has something to do with the distance that makes it
(15:28):
look blue. But I saw pictures of those things and
I'm like, oh, I want to go see those one day.
Asheville is a nice weekend trip. Sure, it's beautiful up there.
Do you guys ever go up there? No? No, even
a couple of years ago. It's it's great. Go to
the what's it called the Big House? Sure, the who's
its name? I don't know why I'm blanking. Yeah, But
(15:52):
there's also like the mountains around their need and like
the town itself has a lot of great restaurants, it
look one for vegan food, you could do a lot
worse than all or craft beer, homemade chocolate. Just don't
go to the Built Moorehouse during Christmas. Well, I just
(16:13):
think it's better non Christmas. Like the Christmas is so
done there that I feel like it obscures a lot
of the beauty of their Builtmore House. And that kind
of Christmas stuff that they put up is not my style.
It's just it's just a lot. Is it like the
Belk style of Christmas? Yeah, ribbons, Yeah, I'm with It's
(16:36):
not my thing. And the Built Moore stands on its own,
it doesn't need all that garbage. But that's just my opinion.
Like I like my Christmas gaudy. Plus you don't get
the gardens that you would. Uh, it's just me. We
made the big mistake of going there in Christmas one time.
Never happened again. It was the worst mistake, was the
worst and once with my car. Here's another uh cool
(16:59):
fat of the show I think is that the lightning
bugs all have gout, or they could very well have
gout because those cells that make that light are riddled
with uric acid crystals, just like you have as a
human with gout. But they do it because they are
crystals to reflect that light away from their little abdomen. Yeah,
(17:20):
it's just like the lenses they used in Robert Agger's masterpiece,
The Lighthouse. Yeah, oh boy, what a movie. I just
wanted to slide a reference in. Uh. And in order
to get that oxygen, we've been saying it needs oxygen.
You're probably calling, how in the world do they get it? Uh,
It is not just gathered through the air. It actually
(17:41):
goes through a tube in the abdomen called the abdominal trichea,
which is very interesting. Yeah, they're not exactly sure if
fireflies are able to turn the supply of oxygen on
or off. It's almost like how you it would inject
fuel into a combustion engine. They are injecting oxygen into
their lucifhrase engine um and producing light with it. But
(18:06):
they don't know if they can use nerves to turn
it on and off, or if they're just you know,
subject to the whims of oxygen availability. We just don't
know at this point. We just don't. Uh. And now
here's how I understand this next bit and you can
correct me if I'm wrong. But they use UM, this
chemical reaction that happens in fireflies to produce that bioluminescence. Uh,
(18:28):
they can use that. You know, we said the a
T P, like every animal on the planet has a TP,
but if you're if you have cell damage, maybe you
might not have as much, or if it's disease, you
may not have enough. And do they actually use this
bioluminescence to inject in the cells to see if they
get that glowy reaction that they're looking for. Yeah, they
(18:49):
use it for that to make sure that the cells
have an expected amount of a TP, to locate cells
that don't have enough a TP, because that would suggest
there's some sort of problem going on there. And then
UM also they figured out how to attach the lucifer
in gene to other genes using I believe crisper um,
which ties into our optogenetics episode UM, where they're using
(19:13):
like the light that's produced by this bioluminous and to
turn on and off nearby jeans, which is nuts. But
the thing the thing I saw that UM that this
luciphrase was used for most abundantly especially in the twentieth century,
was to detect spoilage in like food like milk, because
if you had bacteria growing in your milk, if you
(19:37):
added luciphrase, the milk would start to glow because the
lucifhrase would interact with the A T P in those
bacterial cells, and you would know you needed to pour
some bleach in with your milk. Right, Oh, don't ever
do that. Don't ever drink glowing milk, and don't ever
pour bleach and drink it in anything. But apparently we
humans have like no problems ingesting and working with a
(20:00):
phrase it doesn't do anything bad to our bodies as
far as right now, which is pretty interesting. Alright, so
now we I know everyone's like, this is all great
chemical reactions and stuff, but I would really love to
talk about the sexy stuff because anytime we talk about
animals and insects, we always get to talk about sexy stuff,
which is a lot of fun. It's basically our only outlet,
it really is, except when we you know, blush our
(20:23):
way through episodes on puberty and stuff, or see a
good pair of goal wing doors open up on a car, right,
and of course puberty isn't sexy stuff. I hope that
didn't come across the right. I think that was a
good safe Uh So when they're flashing, like we said,
it is, um, it is a mating ritual, and it
is usually the male flashing their light high above the
(20:46):
sky or high above the yard in the sky to
show off to females who are on the ground kind
of sitting around having a glass of wine and they're
watching the light show and they're like, what do you
think of that one, marge, And they're like, well, he
looks okay, so let me flash back. And they'll flash back,
and then the mail will see that and they'll say, hey,
(21:07):
she just swiped. I don't know if it's left or right,
but in the correct direction. And uh, let me go
down and see if we can have a little party
for the next few hours. Yeah, because that's how long
they couple, And by couple, I mean like have sex.
They stick together for like an hour or multiple hours, chuck,
which is pretty impressive. Agreed. Um, Yeah, an hour to
(21:31):
three hours. That's that's great. Good for them, right, I'm
really happy for them. Uh. Here's the cool thing too, though,
is each species has its own little blinkie pattern because
they want to mate with the appropriate match and so
they're gonna send out their blinkie pattern. Um. In some
places around the world they are synchronous. I think Southeast
(21:52):
Asia has the only like really really truly synchronous lightning bugs,
and that they all blink in unison, which really must
be cool to see. Yeah, and I guess the messages
like come and get it all. It was like kind
of in a creepy Children of the Damned right tone.
(22:14):
Other places, I think they can synchronize, but they don't
become like completely synchronous as a unit, right, No. I
mean they will like in little localized areas and for
a few seconds only. And you've probably seen this and
didn't necessarily recognize what you were looking at. But this
is like when I thought about it, I was like
I was having trouble understanding it from the written description,
(22:34):
and I thought about it and thought about it. I
sat down for a little while, thought about it some more,
and finally like, yeah, of course, um, I mean that's
just a given. And then I finally was like, Okay,
I I think I got this, and I think I've
seen this before. You'll just see a few fireflights to
start to kind of like fall into a rhythm, and
then they fall out of the rhythm after a few flashes.
(22:56):
That's still considered synchronous. You give them a Yeah, they're
trying their best. They haven't oxygen, abdomen trichi god. So yeah. Well,
one of the things I saw that that I thought
was like really really interesting is um. As we'll see
when we talk about what they eat. Most of the
(23:17):
adults that you see flying around either don't eat or
maybe eat plants, stuff like nectar and pollen. But there's
this one kind of firefly which is actually pretty abundant
in um in North America, the photourist species, where the
female of this species will actually mimic the female of
(23:43):
a rival species, Photinus, right, and they'll attract males from
the other species the Photinus species to come over thinking
that they're going to mate, and then what they find
out is that, oh wait, this is the one female
of the one species that is actually um going to
eat me, that is actually predatory against other fireflies, and
(24:04):
now I'm dead. Yeah, they're tricksters because the male uh
folturists can also imitate another male Photinus to attract a
female of its own species. So she shows up thinking
that she might have food, and he's like, oh no,
it's it's time to get down in boogie. That's right.
And then beyond that, chuck it goes even one more
(24:26):
level deeper because they're pretty sure. And there's this really
great website called firefly dot org. It's run by a
guy named Ben Peiffer. From what I understand, he seems
to be quite dedicated to fireflies. But he uh, this
is the only place I saw it. But he was
saying that some researchers think that male folturists, no male photinus,
(24:49):
the ones that end up sometimes being food for female
fo tourists. Male foutinesses have figured out how to put
off bad um flash patterns that make it look like
a female folturists impersonating a male Photinus to scare off
other male patiness fireflies so that it reduces competition for
(25:13):
female potesses. And that's kind of brain breaking, it really is.
But this is apparently what the fireflies are doing with
their time, that and getting down and boogie in. Like
we said, it's a few hours, one to three hours
of that, and when this happens, the male is gonna
transfer his sperm packet to the female. And they call
(25:35):
this in the field of studying this in entomology, they
call it a nuptial gift that the male gives a female.
And this all occurs um individually over like we said,
a few hours, but a few days total of mating
that's gonna happen, usually in the spring. Then the lady
is gonna lay her fertilized eggs either on the ground
(25:56):
or just below the surface in the maybe in some
rotting logs or and you know, multi sort of leaves
and things like that. Gotta be moist. And then three
or four weeks later they're gonna hatch out those little
larvae who were going to live on the ground, terrorizing
their neighbors for about two years. And in the meantime,
mom and dad have gone off and died because they
(26:18):
only live as adults for a few weeks. But you
said it, there's larvae live for two up to two years.
It's by far the longest part of the life cycle.
And they are terrors of the miniature world down there, yes,
they and they have mandibles and they inject their prey
and paralyze them with neurotoxins. And then and I know
(26:40):
we've talked about some other insects that do this. They
they secrete these enzymes that basically liquefy what they're trying
to eat, so they can just suck it up. It's
like a seth brindle fly. Yeah exactly. Uh. And then
in that stage, they they'll eat worms, and worms will
also eat them return the favor. But they'll eat snails,
(27:02):
elat slugs, they'll eat other insects, and they're just down
there kind of wreaking havoc and then also trying not
to get eaten. Yeah, because it goes both ways in
that world. Um and frogs apparently will eat firefly larva
pretty pretty commonly. They'll also eat firefly adults that land
on the ground. I think snakes leap firefly adults on
(27:25):
the ground. Some birds I think ducks do, but it's
not necessarily on purpose. They might just get swept up
with some other actual duck food they might caught up
in the frenzy pretty much. And then fish also like
to eat um, firefly eggs and larva that are like
in marshy areas, like rice paddies or things like that.
But Apparently the most widespread and abundant predators against firefly
(27:50):
larva are spiders. But don't feel bad, because firefly larva
eats spiders as well. And there are also some spiders
that have learned, like, you know, really want to eat
a firefly. I'm I'm kind of scared of those things.
That turns out. Yeah, so here's the deal. They You know,
when you see them flying around, they're flying around very
sort of lazily. They're lighting up their lanterns, broadcasting that
(28:15):
they're out there. Uh. And the reason that they're broadcasting
their presence is like you would think that that's not good, like, oh,
you know, a bird will swooped down and eat me
because they clearly see me flying around. That's actually a
warning sign because they're not great flyers. They're not gonna
dodge you in out maneuver you Maverick style in a dogfight.
(28:36):
They're gonna secrete these nasty um I guess they're toxins
that are really really bitter. They really kind of stink.
I think if you're studying fire flies and you have
like thousands of them in a room, it can kind
of be pretty stinky in there. Yeah. A nauseating odor
when ten thousand to twenty thousand are confined and yeah,
that was one researchers quote. Um. So what they do
(28:59):
is as they deliver this bitter like I think they
secrete if you, drops of blood, and it's just this
toxic bitter taste that you know everything's eating them, but
everything is also like, oh God, why did I just
eat that? Yeah, And apparently this this toxin that they create,
luci bifhagens, which is not a great word. Um. It
(29:19):
is akin to those neurotoxins that some like poisonous tree
frogs produced and secrete. UM. So it could conceivably kill
some things. And I think that might be the same
neurotoxin that that the um larvae uses venom to paralyze
poor slugs and stuff like that. Um. But some species
have been like, you don't want to eat like fireflies,
(29:41):
Like in in one study of trying to feed them
to lizards mix in with meal worms, the lizards will
like like swipe basically spit out and wipe away like
the firefly and then wipe its snout with its forearm
like gross. It's that was disgusting. A think bats learned
Bats are smart. You know, we have a great episode
(30:03):
on bats and they have learned not to eat them
because they did a study in Boise State where they uh,
they coded their ab the little lanterns with paint so
the bats couldn't see them, and the bats started eating them.
But it didn't take very long till the bats were
like literally spitting them out and saying, ah, you jerks,
why are you painting those lanterns. That's I don't want
(30:25):
to eat those things. We learned not to eat those things, right.
And they also found that bats that I guess hadn't
been exposed to fireflies before, um, if they didn't paint
the fireflies, those bats learned even faster to avoid fireflies
because of the Bible luminescence. So what these Boise State
researchers who conducted that studies concluded was that the bioluminescence,
(30:46):
the flashing of fireflies and lightning bugs um actually developed
as a way to warn off predators, including bats, and
that it probably co evolved with that predation and then
became the main trait that it is now, which is
a courtship ritual later on, but that it had a
different purpose at first. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, and they
(31:09):
think this because, um, I think in some species the
eggs in the larvae actually glow as well, and they're
clearly not mating. So no, not yet, not for hours
at a time. I can tell you. All right, Uh,
let's take another break maybe, and we'll talk about why
these blightning bugs are disappearing. Almost said the F word,
(31:31):
and uh, what we can do about it? Right after this, Chuck,
(31:58):
I think it is one of the addist things on
planet Earth. Yea, and I mean that quite actually, that
fireflies are vanishing very quickly, because we're talking about an
enormous drop. And again this is largely anecdotal from people
at a certain age, like our age group grew up
(32:18):
like seeing tons of fireflies, like so many fireflies you
couldn't it never even occurred to you that they could
possibly go away to where they're just gone in some
places now or in in my backyard in in Atlanta,
it's like, you know, if I see five or six,
I'm like, it's a good night tonight, whereas before it
(32:39):
was like the whole yard would have been filled up
with it twenty years ago. And it's really distressing to
think of a world without fireflies, and that seems like
where we're headed, and it's all our fault, basically, it
really is. It's um. I see them a lot more
at my house than I do. UM I feel like
elsewhere in our neighborhood because our yard is crazy and
(33:03):
it's wild and it's you know, we don't spray for
mosquitoes or use pesticides or anything like that. So we
have a pretty good like wild habitat back there for
all kinds of insects. Um. But you know, for a
long time they were harvested I think in different parts
of the world. Uh, they were harvested commercially in Japan
(33:24):
the Gingi firefly, and then in the US from sixty
to about ninety five, the Sigma Chemical Company harvested about
three million a year to get that uh, that lucifhrase
and loose friend. Yeah. Apparently they sold it to the
biomedical industry who would use it to like detect spoiled
milk and stuff like that. Exactly. No, for real, that's
(33:46):
what they were. That's what all those are harvested for.
Saying all that stuff we already talked about, that's what
they needed it for. A hundred million fireflies over that
like thirty something year period, we're harvested by for their
loose phrase. And unfortunately, somebody, some saint patron saint of
fireflies and I think that's Nathan Fillion. You're right, Nathan
(34:08):
Phillion synthesized um lucipher ase and it started to become
widely available and cheaper, and so they lit the fireflies alone.
After that, Why did it take fifteen years to seize
it just to roll it out? I guess I think
it was more like ten, and it was probably really
expensive at first, and then it took about ten years
for them to figure out how to produce it mass
(34:29):
produce it cheaply. And then the Sigma Chemical Company was like,
it's a penny less than the lightning bug was sold. Um.
So yeah, you are seeing fewer fireflies. It's not a
figment of your imagination. Um. They surveyed I think three
fifty lightning bug experts and they said it's really three things,
(34:52):
and they're all because of us. It's habitat loss, toxic chemicals,
and light pollution. UM, habitat loss they have. I don't
think we mentioned this. Is to me that one of
the coolest facts of the show is that if you
see a lightning bug in your backyard, then it's it
was it has a very high likelihood of being born
in your backyard. It's really they're super super localized. And
(35:14):
I just love the thought of that that they sort
of live on your property. Yeah, I mean, like that's
that's that's their whole world, right there is your little backyard.
So it kind of makes you like when I heard that,
I was like, oh, I want to I want to
nurture that and take care of it. Like these these
are like family. Basically, they're like yard family. You know,
they're not interlopers or not neighbors. They're like they belong
(35:35):
in your yard. That's their yard in a lot of ways.
So it's I thought that was kind of neat to realize. Um.
One of the problems of that is the chuck is
that they don't migrate very very well, if at all.
So if if you disrupt their habitat and kill off
the firefly population, they're like that they might be gone
until unless you go find some other firefly larva and
(35:57):
bring them back, Like a new group is not necessarily
going to migrate in and repopulate the area. Yeah, And
this is like we're looking at you individual homeowner. Like
you can say, like the contractor who comes in and
bulldozes a forest to build a neighborhood. And that's certainly true.
But if you say, you know what I don't like, Uh,
(36:19):
I don't have a view of blank. So I'm going
to cut down these seven trees in my backyard to
have a big golf course like seeing, Um, you're disrupting
their habitat by doing that. Yeah, for sure, I don't
want to be too judgy, but I am very much
judging you. Well, I think we should take the other
tech and and then promote things people can do, so
(36:40):
I get I'm interested on the one hand, and then
layam with the haymaker of how they can all right,
how they can help. One of the other problems is um,
artificial light at night? Chuck? Yeah, Allen A l A
n it is uh, you know light blue. We should
do a whole episode on light blution or something that
right out of my mouth. How do they smell? Gross? Um?
(37:04):
Oh weird? Did you have a fritata for breakfast? How? Yeah?
Can you smell the olives them? There? You can smell
them on the words. So we're talking about everything from
just street lights and business lights and any any kind
of light you would find in an urban or more
suburban or suburban area, to something called sky glow, which
(37:26):
is that just more diffuse illumination that you kind of
see everywhere as well now, and that can be so
bright it can exceed full moon levels. And you know,
I see that stuff a little bit out at the
camp even in the middle of the woods. You can
see that skyglow sort of on the lower horizon offt
pudding it is. But when you're a lightning bug and
(37:48):
like you rely on light to find mates, if you're
distracted by a bright light um or the light that
you're putting out is being drowned out by competing artificial light,
that's a real problem and that can that can lead
to a decline in the population so um especially when
you combine habitat loss with you know, somebody keeping their
(38:09):
back porch light on all night, every night, year round.
That's that's not good for the lightning bugs and it's
a big problem for them. So too our cars, because
so many fireflies and lightning bugs live in wooded areas.
We've built so many roads through the woods that when
people drive through there at night. Those car lights can
actually create problem for their courtship and they're hours long
(38:33):
coupling as well, that's right. Uh. And then the last thing,
of course is you know, if you're using pesticides and
herbicides on your lawn and in your yard, you're killing
all kinds of things, including lightning bugs. If you're spraying
for mosquitoes, you are you are wrecking the pollinating system
in your in your property and killing lightning bugs. And uh,
(38:58):
I am not going to judge because US told me
not to, But don'ts pray for mosquitoes. Just don't. That's
supposed to be a last resort. Like, there's so many
other things you can do to get rid of mosquitoes
beyond just spraying for them. And then yeah, not just
the mosquito spray, but any neo nicotinoid pesticide is really
(39:19):
bad for basically every insect in the area, including bees.
Remember our colony collapse episode. Yeah, so saying all the
all the pollinators are being affected, just it's devastating. But
in addition to the chemicals too, you can mow your
lawn too much. Um our our lawns actually make a
pretty good habitat in the absence of other like habitats
(39:42):
that lightning bugs prefer. If you keep your your grass
long enough, you want to kind of provide a buffer
between the mower blade and the lightning bug. So if
you cut your grass a lot and keep it nice
and trim, may want to consider growing it out, you know,
beyond like say the two inch length, and you can
mow it. I just know that when you're mowing it,
you're also stepping on and crushing lightning bug larvae too. So, um,
(40:05):
just be thoughtful when you mow your lawn. How about that? Yeah,
be thoughtful. Um. Mulching is a great idea. I just
I'm actually down to kind of almost zero grass, but
when I did have grass, I would just multum. I'm
not a big fan of raking leaves. Um, certainly as
a stuff you should know, co host, I'm not a
(40:26):
fan of blowing leaves because we know that you are
of the devil if you're doing that, right, Yeah, what,
you don't hate leaf blowers anymore? I hate leaf blowers,
but I use one now. Oh, I know things have changed.
I feel like I should really I needed to fess
(40:46):
up about it. It's it's battery powered, and I use
it sparingly. But yes, I have a leaf blower. I
do too. I never hated him like you did. I
just don't think you should like blow your whole lawn
like out in the street. I use it totally, so
it's just to blow my leaves off my deck back
into my yard. You know who hates the sound of
the leaf blower almost violently? Is David Spade? Really? Yeah?
(41:07):
If you follow my Instagram, probably one out of every
five posts is like him, just like ripping into some
guy who's using a leaf blower over like on the
other end of his neighborhood. He hates leaf blowers. We'll
have to exchange brands because I don't know if your's
as good. But I got a great cordless battery powered
(41:28):
blower that's super powerful. I used the de Walt battery power.
It's pretty great. Okay, what do you use? I can't
remember the name of it. Have to good. Look. Is
it one of those like Eco ones or Orange? Is
probably husk Varnae Echo No, no, no no, no, it's not
one of those big brands. I think it's like works
like w O r xx. Yeah. Yeah, they're good too. Boy,
(41:50):
I was always like, uh, those battery power and don't
have the juice you need, but these have to do. Now,
Yeah they have. I mean I've got a battery powered
lawn mower that I charged one time and still just
cuts like crazy, like you know, a year after the
first time I charged it. They definitely would. That's what
I got to if they last a long time. So um, chuck.
One thing you said about blowing leaves out into the
(42:11):
yard around into like like your curb or something like that,
or even raking them up and like like removing them,
like that is where firefly lava live. So you're removing
the firefly lava from your yard to god knows where,
probably not someplace where they're going to be cared for
and repopulate, probably going to die in the bargain. So yes,
(42:32):
if you're if you really care about your grass, you're
not just gonna leave leaves on there. But you know,
if you have garden beds, you could do that. Apparently
you don't want to clean up your garden in the fall.
You want to just leave it as is over the winter,
because that is a habitat for all sorts of great
creatures that keep your soil going, including firefly larva. Um,
(42:52):
and then you clean it up in the spring, and
if you don't do like rake your leaves off of
your lawn, don't just throw them away, like put them
in paper bag and keep them wet, like maybe under
a tree for the winter, and then work them into
the soil in the spring, and you've got a great
yard suddenly for the firefly larva that you just kind
of helped nurture over the winter. Yeah. Plus it's great
(43:15):
for your garden beds. It's just really super rich, uh,
good stuff, it really is. What else you said, Basically,
you don't want to cut down those trees to give
yourself a golf course view. You want to kind of
leave parts of your yard wild too, right, Yeah, I
mean my backyard now is a little too wild for
my taste. Um, it's pretty crazy. Oh man, I gotta
(43:37):
come over and see it. Yeah, it's you know, Yeah,
i mean, Emily went nuts planning things over the past
few years, and it's just, uh, it's something else. It's
like it's it feels like a a science experiment going
on back there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, we let it
go wild. But you can just let parts of your
like designate a corner of your yard and let that
(44:00):
kind of go a little bit crazy. Remember remember when
we studied dar one years ago, how he would just
let everything go crazy because he could just study so
much more stuff. Yeah, and like if you have like
a tree line or something on the fringes of your yard,
let that go crazy. Let it grow out a little
bit more, like you know, like leave some of the
shrubs you think are kind of ugly that are growing
(44:20):
in there, or replace them with native shrubs even better,
or like it can be as simple as if a
tree falls down in your yard and it's not like
covering the grass, just leave it where it is and
let it rock. That's a great firefly habitat right there. Totally.
The final thing you can do, well, there's a couple
of things. But turn those lights off. You've got big
(44:41):
old yard spotlights. I don't know what you're doing, but
no one wants that. Your neighbors don't want that. Fireflies
don't want that. Uh, nobody likes that. At least put
them on like a motion sensitive thing that turns off
after like a minute. Yeah, yeah, that's that's fine, But yeah,
turn those lights off. Try and make it dark. And
then this last thing is something and I'm really bummed
that I missed out on this year. I did not
(45:02):
know about it, but I'm definitely gonna sign up. It's
called the Vanishing Firefly Project, and what they do is
offer up an app that's for free and you on
three different days they have a census June six, July four,
in August one where you go out and you count
(45:22):
fireflies or lightning bugs in your yard for a certain
amount of time and then enter that into the census
and they're getting a pretty robust like body of data
from this. Yeah, there's another group called Firefly Watch from
the Museum of Science in Boston, UM and they have
an even more extensive census. But it's basically like citizen
(45:43):
scientists contributing to too much needed data because, like we
were saying, all the stuff about the fireflies vanishing is
anecdotal um and only now our researchers really starting to
turn to studying the issues so we can figure out
what the biggest problems are and how to aviate them
so we don't lose fireflies because nobody wants that. I
(46:04):
don't care how nihilistic you are, I don't care how
little you care about anything. If you stopped and really
searched your feelings, you would find that you don't want
a world without fireflies. Agreed or lightning bugs. Agreed even more,
And I have to say, Chuck, I really feel like
we brought the country together much needed by using both
(46:27):
fireflies and lightning bugs in this episode. Agreed. Okay, Well,
since Chuck said agreed at least three times, it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this hot off the presses.
Hey guys, this is Kelsey from Chico, California. I'm a
counselor and professor at local community college and I've never
(46:49):
gotten sarcasm. My family is very blunt, and if anyone
is sarcastic, well I wouldn't know it. I start all
my classes. That was sarchasm, right, don't think so? I
start all my classes explaining that I'm being genuine. And
if you think I said something sarcastic, I didn't. But
in the podcast you mentioned the individuals that are neuro
(47:10):
uh atypical might not get sarcasm. My friends who work
in special education of totally used hand signs with me
when they're being sarcastic in your podcast, which I've listened
to from the beginning. I only know Josh is being
sarcastic when I think that was kind of mean, and
then Chuck giggles a little bit. That's the tell I guess. Yeah. Uh.
(47:33):
When my husband is sarcastic and he gets a double laugh,
meaning he laughs at himself for the joke, I do
that a lot and then giggles a little when he
has to explain it to me, that's when I know
he's being sarcastic. Uh. Anyway, you two are great and
often use your podcast as another form of learning in
my courses. And that is from Kelsey. Thanks a lot, Kelsey,
(47:55):
thanks for pointing all that out because I hadn't really
realized how they could be in parted. But Chuck is
my sarcasm Beard. Everybody, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Uh. Well,
we appreciate Kelsey too for writing in. And if you
want to be like Kelsey, you can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at i heeart radio dot com.
(48:21):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and
it's just the two of us, and we are here
today to present a Stuff you Should Know about fireflies
(00:24):
and lightning bugs, which are pretty much fun in the state.
I assume you're a firefly guy, right, I'm both evascillate.
I'm an I'm a vascillator. Really, I'll say it again, i'vacillate. Uh,
that's weird. I don't I don't know many people that
kind of interchange these. Well, I grew up in Toledo,
(00:48):
and I think that's where I picked up lightning bug.
And then down here in the South it's firefly. Right,
you got a backwards son. Well, then I picked up
firefly as a kid in lightning bug in the South.
That's it. Then, Yeah, it's it's I mean, I'm obviously
born and raised here forever. I just can't imagine saying fireflies.
(01:09):
It's just seems very strange to me. Yeah, it makes
you think of like um arsonists. No, it makes me
think of brown Coats and the TV show Okay, sure
that was a good TV show. Yeah, I mean that's
a good thing to think about for sure. But yeah,
that's the deal. Apparently in the South it's lightning bugs generally.
(01:31):
I think firefly out west and northeast, and then midwest
and south is lightning bug generally. Yeah, generally. I mean
there's pockets here there of weirdos who call them other
things like jack and stuff like that, but most people
see fireflies and lightning bugs is like a synonymous and interchangeable.
(01:53):
But apparently there's a group of firefly researchers that that differentiate. Um,
we're they use fireflies is like the umbrella term for
a few other categories. Right. Uh, there's the glow worm,
of which the ladies don't have wings and they have
a steady glow. They're they're big in the UK, huge
(02:17):
like big in size or just popular popular popular is
basically what I mean. They're like three ft long. Yeah. Uh.
And then you've got your daytime dark fireflies, which this
just get this out of here if you ask me, Yeah,
they don't even have light. So I even throw the
word firefly in there. They ruin it for everybody else.
(02:39):
That's the problem with using genetics for taxonomy, you know, right. Uh,
and then you've got your your flashing firefly, and that's
what we're kind of talking about here, which is the
lightning bug. Yeah, that's where it's interchangeable, the flash, flashing firefly,
lightning bug, one and the same. And we're not going
to be pedantic from this point on. But I felt
like that was worth pointing out. You know, no, I agree, Well,
(03:01):
we're going to be a little pedantic. Yeah, I guess
you're right. I forgot because fireflies aren't flies. Lightning bugs
aren't bugs. And this is there's quite a few little
facts of the podcast that you can know. This is
one of those, I think where people I don't know
a lot about lightning bugs, so they can always delight
their friends at their next backyard party by saying it.
(03:22):
They're actually all beatles, that's right, And everybody would be like, what,
Oh my god, you just won the party. Oh man,
I haven't won a party in so long. It's been
a while. I haven't been to a party, and so long,
even long before the pan the pandemic, I stopped getting
invited because you won too many parties. I guess I
can't have it was like having some Moan Biles over
(03:45):
for a gymnastics party. What. I don't get that one.
The goat thing. I don't get the goat thing. She's
the greatest of all time with the um, with the gymnastics.
I'm saying I'm the greatest of all times with party
winning with facts I was. I was. I have goats
that live across the street and I literally just fed them,
So my mind went to the animal. So I didn't
(04:07):
get it. Yes, all all about Simone Bile. She's great.
Take care of herself. I love it. Yeah, sure, um so, No,
I'm sorry that sounded like I was ambivalent. I agree
with you. I think it is because that she took
care of herself. I agree to Well you said the first.
Obviously you agree with yourself. Should we cut all that out? No,
(04:31):
I think that's stuffy. Should know gold. We haven't had
some weirdo exchange. Yeah, for a while. It's been a while,
all right, Can we get back to lightning bugs? For
the love of god? Uh, they're class Oh boy, here
we go. I'm gonna say the order. Uh, Cooter, I
think you just nailed it. You just won the pronunciation party.
(04:54):
What you want to try the family. I've been trying
to figure this out. I think it's lampirate A. I
think that's about right because piro like fire like the bright.
It could also be lampyra Day. It's one of those two.
That's what I'm staking my claimant. I'm gonna vacillate between
Lampyriday and Lampyriday all right, but all together in this
(05:18):
order and family there are here in the North American continent.
They're more than a hundred and seventy species and more
than two thousand worldwide. And they're always discovering more specie.
Not always, but they're still discovering Like every day. Uh,
they're discovering more species, so that list grows and grows. Yeah,
(05:38):
which is pretty cool, um, especially considering that they are
dropping like flies as far as anecdotal evidence is concerned,
including anecdotal evidence from me. Yeah, me too, which we'll
get to very disappointing. So um, the thing about fireflies,
since they're a beetle family, most of them are all
winged beetles. Almost all of them are that, like you said,
(05:59):
some like low worms are typically include females that don't
have wings, but for the most part, they have wings,
they fly around, and like winged beetles, they have certain
parts um in particular the electria eletra eltra, I would
say eletra or electra. Okay, And that is very cool
(06:19):
little closure that like they're like bay doors that open
and close on the back of the of the firefly
to allow the wings to spread out to take flight.
It's really neat. It's like a DeLorean. Yeah, it is
a lot or like a like the test last uv
Oh did they open like that? That's so showy. It's
(06:42):
pretty cool, though, Man, what is it about those doors?
I don't know, Yeah, I know. I also love the
old Lamborghini ones would slide open ever since I was
eight something about doors like that or just just tickle me. Uh.
And they yes, those those encase the wing and protect them.
And then they also have an encased head. It's called pronotum,
(07:05):
and that's the covering over basically the entire head. So
if you're looking on from a bird's eye view, you're
just gonna see no, you're gonna see any face. Yeah,
it's just like a like a protect covering. It's like
you know, Jerry only from the Misfits. It's like that
get up that he wears that covers the back of
(07:25):
his neck and head. I don't think I've seen that. Yeah,
and it has spikes, and I can tell you that
you meet has been impaled briefly on one of those
spikes that show that Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein invited us
to Madison Square Cards. Yes, but it definitely caught our
attention because those things are not for show man. The
(07:46):
spikes are very pointy and their metal. Yes, okay, I
didn't if it's like Guar and it's all like phone. No,
it's it's like Guar was apparently doing like a model
of what Jerry Only was wearing all these years. Yeah,
all right, how big are these things? What did we
settle on? I know you send an update because is
(08:07):
that just because it was incorrect? Because seven sixteenths of
an inch it makes no sense to anyone. Well, it
said that they range in size from like seven sixteenths
of an inch to nine sixteenths of an inch. I
think that's specifically like the big Dipper firefly. Fireflies in
general typically range from about a fifth of an inch
to an inch, typically like five to twenty five millimeters,
(08:29):
starting in about the size of a grain of rice,
all the way up to an inch. But there's some
that are like way bigger than that. Yeah, I mean
they can be. There are some that can be as
big as the palm of your hand. But um, you know,
here in the United States is good old American ones.
You know how big they are. They're about as big
as a you know, as big as a fingernail, that's right.
And when they fly around, they go do do do
(08:49):
do do do do do do do do do dude,
do do do do do do do. I'm gonna squirt
some light on you and you and speaking of them,
score lights. Just last thing about their body, the organ,
the light organ in their abdomen or tail is called
the lantern, which I think is love that. Yeah. So
where do you find besides backyards in the suburbs, where
(09:12):
do you find fireflies? Charles? Well, you can find them
on any continent except, of course, Antarctica. I feel like
we say that a lot, poor Antarctica. Um, they are
going to be in tropical regions, temperate zones. You're gonna
see them. Uh, it depends on what stage they're in.
The stage that we all love, the adult stage. It's
(09:33):
only a couple of weeks long when they're flying around
and lightening up their bellies. Um. But mainly and we'll
get to their life cycle. They spend most of their
time as larva on the ground in on the forest floor,
kind of near water, usually the larval stage. They look
like little almost like little dinosaur caterpillars. They're really interesting
(09:54):
looking and they look nothing like you would think if
you're used to seeing like these fireflies fly around. Yeah, especially,
I mean fireflies just seem so like mild mannered and
almost kind of dopey to some extent when they're flying around.
So now when they're in the rival stages, we'll see
there holy terrors basically. But you know, they have like
all sorts of different habitats. You can find them up
(10:16):
in the southern provinces of Canada. You can find them
in some arid areas as long as there is permanent water,
you could conceivably have um firefly populations and even like
just you know, perpetually moist areas too. It doesn't have
to be like a pond or something, but moist, like
real moist areas. Yeah, and you're gonna see them in
(10:41):
the humid summer evenings generally. Uh, in the south, it
can be hot all year long, so you can see
them some in the fall as well. And uh some
though like their outliers, Like you said, some of them
are really super aquatic, and some of them like never
come down from their trees. Uh. And these are the
ones you know, of the two thousand species all over
(11:03):
the world that we're talking about, right, And um, if
you were looking for a firefly show, the best seasons
that you're going to have firefly shows are after a
warm wet spring, or even during a warm wet spring,
and or after a mild winter because those larvae that
live in those marty areas, Um, we'll have higher survival
(11:24):
rates in a colder climate with a mild winter during
the over wintering period. All right, I think that's a
great set up. Sure, let's get Yeah, maybe we should
take a break and reveal to everyone what the heck
they're doing with those lanterns to begin with. Huh. I
think so, all right, we'll be right back. Okay, Chuck,
(12:08):
We're about to act as lucifer to all these people
because we will be bringing light to understanding of how
fireflies produce light using appropriately lucifer aise. Right, uh, and
I guess we can go ahead. And since I promised
a big reveal, they're doing all this to attract a mate.
They're trying to get down in boogie with another lightning bug.
(12:30):
That's why they're lighting up like that. Oh yeah, I'm sorry,
I forgot about the reveal and the one and a
half seconds between between your your cliffhanger and coming back. Yeah.
I wonder if people think if we leave for a
hundred twenty seconds, right and just go, you know, take
a stretch or whatever, and we just sit there in
silence for here, you won't let us talk. Um. So, yeah,
(12:56):
they're lighting up to attract a mate. And what they're
doing here, they have these specialized cells in their abdomen
to make that lantern light up. And it contains, like
you said, that chemical called lucifer in and it makes
an enzyme called lucifer aise. If if you don't want
to sound devilish about it, that would be a fine pronunciation.
(13:16):
I like lucifer in and lucifer aise, But they need
something else to write. They need oxygen to make that
thing blaze. Yeah, that and a dinas scene triphosphate or
a t P, which is that that chemically stored energy
that's found in basically all cells of all life everywhere. Yeah,
it's just kind of this ubiquitous thing that kind of
(13:38):
makes it's what powers life. So when it all kind
of combines where you have um oxygen and a t
P and lucifer in and lucifer aise the enzyme that's
produced by by luciferen um, this chemical reaction produces light.
There's a couple of byproducts oxy lucifer in, an adena
(14:01):
seen monophosphate, and then lights given off. And you would
think like, okay, light and heat. Sure that's the chemical reaction,
so it's going to produce some heat now, Absolutely not.
Here's one of those facts of the podcast. In my opinion,
they call the kind of light that fireflies produced, the
kind of bioluminescence that fireflies produced um cold light because
(14:25):
it is one efficient. No, none of that the energy
released from that chemical reaction is lost to heat. It
is all um. It just produces photons only. Yeah, and
that's why children can let a lightning bug land on
their finger and that little abdomen that lantern can light
up on their finger and they don't go al and
(14:46):
smash it. Yeah, try that with the sparkler. Don't do that.
It doesn't work. The light is the actual light, and
the wavelength is between five tin and six and seventy nanometers.
It looks yellowish to me. It looks a little greenish.
It's been described as reddish green, but it looks like
(15:08):
a yellowish green to me. It depends on the I think, yeah, yeah,
I think there's ones that even give off blue. Right. Yeah,
there's some around Asheville called the blue ghost firefly, and
from a distance they look blue, but up close, if
you catch one and hold it in your hand, it, um,
it's like a it's like a greenish thing. So it
has something to do with the distance that makes it
(15:28):
look blue. But I saw pictures of those things and
I'm like, oh, I want to go see those one day.
Asheville is a nice weekend trip. Sure, it's beautiful up there.
Do you guys ever go up there? No? No, even
a couple of years ago. It's it's great. Go to
the what's it called the Big House? Sure, the who's
its name? I don't know why I'm blanking. Yeah, But
(15:52):
there's also like the mountains around their need and like
the town itself has a lot of great restaurants, it
look one for vegan food, you could do a lot
worse than all or craft beer, homemade chocolate. Just don't
go to the Built Moorehouse during Christmas. Well, I just
(16:13):
think it's better non Christmas. Like the Christmas is so
done there that I feel like it obscures a lot
of the beauty of their Builtmore House. And that kind
of Christmas stuff that they put up is not my style.
It's just it's just a lot. Is it like the
Belk style of Christmas? Yeah, ribbons, Yeah, I'm with It's
(16:36):
not my thing. And the Built Moore stands on its own,
it doesn't need all that garbage. But that's just my opinion.
Like I like my Christmas gaudy. Plus you don't get
the gardens that you would. Uh, it's just me. We
made the big mistake of going there in Christmas one time.
Never happened again. It was the worst mistake, was the
worst and once with my car. Here's another uh cool
(16:59):
fat of the show I think is that the lightning
bugs all have gout, or they could very well have
gout because those cells that make that light are riddled
with uric acid crystals, just like you have as a
human with gout. But they do it because they are
crystals to reflect that light away from their little abdomen. Yeah,
(17:20):
it's just like the lenses they used in Robert Agger's masterpiece,
The Lighthouse. Yeah, oh boy, what a movie. I just
wanted to slide a reference in. Uh. And in order
to get that oxygen, we've been saying it needs oxygen.
You're probably calling, how in the world do they get it? Uh,
It is not just gathered through the air. It actually
(17:41):
goes through a tube in the abdomen called the abdominal trichea,
which is very interesting. Yeah, they're not exactly sure if
fireflies are able to turn the supply of oxygen on
or off. It's almost like how you it would inject
fuel into a combustion engine. They are injecting oxygen into
their lucifhrase engine um and producing light with it. But
(18:06):
they don't know if they can use nerves to turn
it on and off, or if they're just you know,
subject to the whims of oxygen availability. We just don't
know at this point. We just don't. Uh. And now
here's how I understand this next bit and you can
correct me if I'm wrong. But they use UM, this
chemical reaction that happens in fireflies to produce that bioluminescence. Uh,
(18:28):
they can use that. You know, we said the a
T P, like every animal on the planet has a TP,
but if you're if you have cell damage, maybe you
might not have as much, or if it's disease, you
may not have enough. And do they actually use this
bioluminescence to inject in the cells to see if they
get that glowy reaction that they're looking for. Yeah, they
(18:49):
use it for that to make sure that the cells
have an expected amount of a TP, to locate cells
that don't have enough a TP, because that would suggest
there's some sort of problem going on there. And then
UM also they figured out how to attach the lucifer
in gene to other genes using I believe crisper um,
which ties into our optogenetics episode UM, where they're using
(19:13):
like the light that's produced by this bioluminous and to
turn on and off nearby jeans, which is nuts. But
the thing the thing I saw that UM that this
luciphrase was used for most abundantly especially in the twentieth century,
was to detect spoilage in like food like milk, because
if you had bacteria growing in your milk, if you
(19:37):
added luciphrase, the milk would start to glow because the
lucifhrase would interact with the A T P in those
bacterial cells, and you would know you needed to pour
some bleach in with your milk. Right, Oh, don't ever
do that. Don't ever drink glowing milk, and don't ever
pour bleach and drink it in anything. But apparently we
humans have like no problems ingesting and working with a
(20:00):
phrase it doesn't do anything bad to our bodies as
far as right now, which is pretty interesting. Alright, so
now we I know everyone's like, this is all great
chemical reactions and stuff, but I would really love to
talk about the sexy stuff because anytime we talk about
animals and insects, we always get to talk about sexy stuff,
which is a lot of fun. It's basically our only outlet,
it really is, except when we you know, blush our
(20:23):
way through episodes on puberty and stuff, or see a
good pair of goal wing doors open up on a car, right,
and of course puberty isn't sexy stuff. I hope that
didn't come across the right. I think that was a
good safe Uh So when they're flashing, like we said,
it is, um, it is a mating ritual, and it
is usually the male flashing their light high above the
(20:46):
sky or high above the yard in the sky to
show off to females who are on the ground kind
of sitting around having a glass of wine and they're
watching the light show and they're like, what do you
think of that one, marge, And they're like, well, he
looks okay, so let me flash back. And they'll flash back,
and then the mail will see that and they'll say, hey,
(21:07):
she just swiped. I don't know if it's left or right,
but in the correct direction. And uh, let me go
down and see if we can have a little party
for the next few hours. Yeah, because that's how long
they couple, And by couple, I mean like have sex.
They stick together for like an hour or multiple hours, chuck,
which is pretty impressive. Agreed. Um, Yeah, an hour to
(21:31):
three hours. That's that's great. Good for them, right, I'm
really happy for them. Uh. Here's the cool thing too, though,
is each species has its own little blinkie pattern because
they want to mate with the appropriate match and so
they're gonna send out their blinkie pattern. Um. In some
places around the world they are synchronous. I think Southeast
(21:52):
Asia has the only like really really truly synchronous lightning bugs,
and that they all blink in unison, which really must
be cool to see. Yeah, and I guess the messages
like come and get it all. It was like kind
of in a creepy Children of the Damned right tone.
(22:14):
Other places, I think they can synchronize, but they don't
become like completely synchronous as a unit, right, No. I
mean they will like in little localized areas and for
a few seconds only. And you've probably seen this and
didn't necessarily recognize what you were looking at. But this
is like when I thought about it, I was like
I was having trouble understanding it from the written description,
(22:34):
and I thought about it and thought about it. I
sat down for a little while, thought about it some more,
and finally like, yeah, of course, um, I mean that's
just a given. And then I finally was like, Okay,
I I think I got this, and I think I've
seen this before. You'll just see a few fireflights to
start to kind of like fall into a rhythm, and
then they fall out of the rhythm after a few flashes.
(22:56):
That's still considered synchronous. You give them a Yeah, they're
trying their best. They haven't oxygen, abdomen trichi god. So yeah. Well,
one of the things I saw that that I thought
was like really really interesting is um. As we'll see
when we talk about what they eat. Most of the
(23:17):
adults that you see flying around either don't eat or
maybe eat plants, stuff like nectar and pollen. But there's
this one kind of firefly which is actually pretty abundant
in um in North America, the photourist species, where the
female of this species will actually mimic the female of
(23:43):
a rival species, Photinus, right, and they'll attract males from
the other species the Photinus species to come over thinking
that they're going to mate, and then what they find
out is that, oh wait, this is the one female
of the one species that is actually um going to
eat me, that is actually predatory against other fireflies, and
(24:04):
now I'm dead. Yeah, they're tricksters because the male uh
folturists can also imitate another male Photinus to attract a
female of its own species. So she shows up thinking
that she might have food, and he's like, oh no,
it's it's time to get down in boogie. That's right.
And then beyond that, chuck it goes even one more
(24:26):
level deeper because they're pretty sure. And there's this really
great website called firefly dot org. It's run by a
guy named Ben Peiffer. From what I understand, he seems
to be quite dedicated to fireflies. But he uh, this
is the only place I saw it. But he was
saying that some researchers think that male folturists, no male photinus,
(24:49):
the ones that end up sometimes being food for female
fo tourists. Male foutinesses have figured out how to put
off bad um flash patterns that make it look like
a female folturists impersonating a male Photinus to scare off
other male patiness fireflies so that it reduces competition for
(25:13):
female potesses. And that's kind of brain breaking, it really is.
But this is apparently what the fireflies are doing with
their time, that and getting down and boogie in. Like
we said, it's a few hours, one to three hours
of that, and when this happens, the male is gonna
transfer his sperm packet to the female. And they call
(25:35):
this in the field of studying this in entomology, they
call it a nuptial gift that the male gives a female.
And this all occurs um individually over like we said,
a few hours, but a few days total of mating
that's gonna happen, usually in the spring. Then the lady
is gonna lay her fertilized eggs either on the ground
(25:56):
or just below the surface in the maybe in some
rotting logs or and you know, multi sort of leaves
and things like that. Gotta be moist. And then three
or four weeks later they're gonna hatch out those little
larvae who were going to live on the ground, terrorizing
their neighbors for about two years. And in the meantime,
mom and dad have gone off and died because they
(26:18):
only live as adults for a few weeks. But you
said it, there's larvae live for two up to two years.
It's by far the longest part of the life cycle.
And they are terrors of the miniature world down there, yes,
they and they have mandibles and they inject their prey
and paralyze them with neurotoxins. And then and I know
(26:40):
we've talked about some other insects that do this. They
they secrete these enzymes that basically liquefy what they're trying
to eat, so they can just suck it up. It's
like a seth brindle fly. Yeah exactly. Uh. And then
in that stage, they they'll eat worms, and worms will
also eat them return the favor. But they'll eat snails,
(27:02):
elat slugs, they'll eat other insects, and they're just down
there kind of wreaking havoc and then also trying not
to get eaten. Yeah, because it goes both ways in
that world. Um and frogs apparently will eat firefly larva
pretty pretty commonly. They'll also eat firefly adults that land
on the ground. I think snakes leap firefly adults on
(27:25):
the ground. Some birds I think ducks do, but it's
not necessarily on purpose. They might just get swept up
with some other actual duck food they might caught up
in the frenzy pretty much. And then fish also like
to eat um, firefly eggs and larva that are like
in marshy areas, like rice paddies or things like that.
But Apparently the most widespread and abundant predators against firefly
(27:50):
larva are spiders. But don't feel bad, because firefly larva
eats spiders as well. And there are also some spiders
that have learned, like, you know, really want to eat
a firefly. I'm I'm kind of scared of those things.
That turns out. Yeah, so here's the deal. They You know,
when you see them flying around, they're flying around very
sort of lazily. They're lighting up their lanterns, broadcasting that
(28:15):
they're out there. Uh. And the reason that they're broadcasting
their presence is like you would think that that's not good, like, oh,
you know, a bird will swooped down and eat me
because they clearly see me flying around. That's actually a
warning sign because they're not great flyers. They're not gonna
dodge you in out maneuver you Maverick style in a dogfight.
(28:36):
They're gonna secrete these nasty um I guess they're toxins
that are really really bitter. They really kind of stink.
I think if you're studying fire flies and you have
like thousands of them in a room, it can kind
of be pretty stinky in there. Yeah. A nauseating odor
when ten thousand to twenty thousand are confined and yeah,
that was one researchers quote. Um. So what they do
(28:59):
is as they deliver this bitter like I think they
secrete if you, drops of blood, and it's just this
toxic bitter taste that you know everything's eating them, but
everything is also like, oh God, why did I just
eat that? Yeah, And apparently this this toxin that they create,
luci bifhagens, which is not a great word. Um. It
(29:19):
is akin to those neurotoxins that some like poisonous tree
frogs produced and secrete. UM. So it could conceivably kill
some things. And I think that might be the same
neurotoxin that that the um larvae uses venom to paralyze
poor slugs and stuff like that. Um. But some species
have been like, you don't want to eat like fireflies,
(29:41):
Like in in one study of trying to feed them
to lizards mix in with meal worms, the lizards will
like like swipe basically spit out and wipe away like
the firefly and then wipe its snout with its forearm
like gross. It's that was disgusting. A think bats learned
Bats are smart. You know, we have a great episode
(30:03):
on bats and they have learned not to eat them
because they did a study in Boise State where they uh,
they coded their ab the little lanterns with paint so
the bats couldn't see them, and the bats started eating them.
But it didn't take very long till the bats were
like literally spitting them out and saying, ah, you jerks,
why are you painting those lanterns. That's I don't want
(30:25):
to eat those things. We learned not to eat those things, right.
And they also found that bats that I guess hadn't
been exposed to fireflies before, um, if they didn't paint
the fireflies, those bats learned even faster to avoid fireflies
because of the Bible luminescence. So what these Boise State
researchers who conducted that studies concluded was that the bioluminescence,
(30:46):
the flashing of fireflies and lightning bugs um actually developed
as a way to warn off predators, including bats, and
that it probably co evolved with that predation and then
became the main trait that it is now, which is
a courtship ritual later on, but that it had a
different purpose at first. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, and they
(31:09):
think this because, um, I think in some species the
eggs in the larvae actually glow as well, and they're
clearly not mating. So no, not yet, not for hours
at a time. I can tell you. All right, Uh,
let's take another break maybe, and we'll talk about why
these blightning bugs are disappearing. Almost said the F word,
(31:31):
and uh, what we can do about it? Right after this, Chuck,
(31:58):
I think it is one of the addist things on
planet Earth. Yea, and I mean that quite actually, that
fireflies are vanishing very quickly, because we're talking about an
enormous drop. And again this is largely anecdotal from people
at a certain age, like our age group grew up
(32:18):
like seeing tons of fireflies, like so many fireflies you
couldn't it never even occurred to you that they could
possibly go away to where they're just gone in some
places now or in in my backyard in in Atlanta,
it's like, you know, if I see five or six,
I'm like, it's a good night tonight, whereas before it
(32:39):
was like the whole yard would have been filled up
with it twenty years ago. And it's really distressing to
think of a world without fireflies, and that seems like
where we're headed, and it's all our fault, basically, it
really is. It's um. I see them a lot more
at my house than I do. UM I feel like
elsewhere in our neighborhood because our yard is crazy and
(33:03):
it's wild and it's you know, we don't spray for
mosquitoes or use pesticides or anything like that. So we
have a pretty good like wild habitat back there for
all kinds of insects. Um. But you know, for a
long time they were harvested I think in different parts
of the world. Uh, they were harvested commercially in Japan
(33:24):
the Gingi firefly, and then in the US from sixty
to about ninety five, the Sigma Chemical Company harvested about
three million a year to get that uh, that lucifhrase
and loose friend. Yeah. Apparently they sold it to the
biomedical industry who would use it to like detect spoiled
milk and stuff like that. Exactly. No, for real, that's
(33:46):
what they were. That's what all those are harvested for.
Saying all that stuff we already talked about, that's what
they needed it for. A hundred million fireflies over that
like thirty something year period, we're harvested by for their
loose phrase. And unfortunately, somebody, some saint patron saint of
fireflies and I think that's Nathan Fillion. You're right, Nathan
(34:08):
Phillion synthesized um lucipher ase and it started to become
widely available and cheaper, and so they lit the fireflies alone.
After that, Why did it take fifteen years to seize
it just to roll it out? I guess I think
it was more like ten, and it was probably really
expensive at first, and then it took about ten years
for them to figure out how to produce it mass
(34:29):
produce it cheaply. And then the Sigma Chemical Company was like,
it's a penny less than the lightning bug was sold. Um.
So yeah, you are seeing fewer fireflies. It's not a
figment of your imagination. Um. They surveyed I think three
fifty lightning bug experts and they said it's really three things,
(34:52):
and they're all because of us. It's habitat loss, toxic chemicals,
and light pollution. UM, habitat loss they have. I don't
think we mentioned this. Is to me that one of
the coolest facts of the show is that if you
see a lightning bug in your backyard, then it's it
was it has a very high likelihood of being born
in your backyard. It's really they're super super localized. And
(35:14):
I just love the thought of that that they sort
of live on your property. Yeah, I mean, like that's
that's that's their whole world, right there is your little backyard.
So it kind of makes you like when I heard that,
I was like, oh, I want to I want to
nurture that and take care of it. Like these these
are like family. Basically, they're like yard family. You know,
they're not interlopers or not neighbors. They're like they belong
(35:35):
in your yard. That's their yard in a lot of ways.
So it's I thought that was kind of neat to realize. Um.
One of the problems of that is the chuck is
that they don't migrate very very well, if at all.
So if if you disrupt their habitat and kill off
the firefly population, they're like that they might be gone
until unless you go find some other firefly larva and
(35:57):
bring them back, Like a new group is not necessarily
going to migrate in and repopulate the area. Yeah, And
this is like we're looking at you individual homeowner. Like
you can say, like the contractor who comes in and
bulldozes a forest to build a neighborhood. And that's certainly true.
But if you say, you know what I don't like, Uh,
(36:19):
I don't have a view of blank. So I'm going
to cut down these seven trees in my backyard to
have a big golf course like seeing, Um, you're disrupting
their habitat by doing that. Yeah, for sure, I don't
want to be too judgy, but I am very much
judging you. Well, I think we should take the other
tech and and then promote things people can do, so
(36:40):
I get I'm interested on the one hand, and then
layam with the haymaker of how they can all right,
how they can help. One of the other problems is um,
artificial light at night? Chuck? Yeah, Allen A l A
n it is uh, you know light blue. We should
do a whole episode on light blution or something that
right out of my mouth. How do they smell? Gross? Um?
(37:04):
Oh weird? Did you have a fritata for breakfast? How? Yeah?
Can you smell the olives them? There? You can smell
them on the words. So we're talking about everything from
just street lights and business lights and any any kind
of light you would find in an urban or more
suburban or suburban area, to something called sky glow, which
(37:26):
is that just more diffuse illumination that you kind of
see everywhere as well now, and that can be so
bright it can exceed full moon levels. And you know,
I see that stuff a little bit out at the
camp even in the middle of the woods. You can
see that skyglow sort of on the lower horizon offt
pudding it is. But when you're a lightning bug and
(37:48):
like you rely on light to find mates, if you're
distracted by a bright light um or the light that
you're putting out is being drowned out by competing artificial light,
that's a real problem and that can that can lead
to a decline in the population so um especially when
you combine habitat loss with you know, somebody keeping their
(38:09):
back porch light on all night, every night, year round.
That's that's not good for the lightning bugs and it's
a big problem for them. So too our cars, because
so many fireflies and lightning bugs live in wooded areas.
We've built so many roads through the woods that when
people drive through there at night. Those car lights can
actually create problem for their courtship and they're hours long
(38:33):
coupling as well, that's right. Uh. And then the last thing,
of course is you know, if you're using pesticides and
herbicides on your lawn and in your yard, you're killing
all kinds of things, including lightning bugs. If you're spraying
for mosquitoes, you are you are wrecking the pollinating system
in your in your property and killing lightning bugs. And uh,
(38:58):
I am not going to judge because US told me
not to, But don'ts pray for mosquitoes. Just don't. That's
supposed to be a last resort. Like, there's so many
other things you can do to get rid of mosquitoes
beyond just spraying for them. And then yeah, not just
the mosquito spray, but any neo nicotinoid pesticide is really
(39:19):
bad for basically every insect in the area, including bees.
Remember our colony collapse episode. Yeah, so saying all the
all the pollinators are being affected, just it's devastating. But
in addition to the chemicals too, you can mow your
lawn too much. Um our our lawns actually make a
pretty good habitat in the absence of other like habitats
(39:42):
that lightning bugs prefer. If you keep your your grass
long enough, you want to kind of provide a buffer
between the mower blade and the lightning bug. So if
you cut your grass a lot and keep it nice
and trim, may want to consider growing it out, you know,
beyond like say the two inch length, and you can
mow it. I just know that when you're mowing it,
you're also stepping on and crushing lightning bug larvae too. So, um,
(40:05):
just be thoughtful when you mow your lawn. How about that? Yeah,
be thoughtful. Um. Mulching is a great idea. I just
I'm actually down to kind of almost zero grass, but
when I did have grass, I would just multum. I'm
not a big fan of raking leaves. Um, certainly as
a stuff you should know, co host, I'm not a
(40:26):
fan of blowing leaves because we know that you are
of the devil if you're doing that, right, Yeah, what,
you don't hate leaf blowers anymore? I hate leaf blowers,
but I use one now. Oh, I know things have changed.
I feel like I should really I needed to fess
(40:46):
up about it. It's it's battery powered, and I use
it sparingly. But yes, I have a leaf blower. I
do too. I never hated him like you did. I
just don't think you should like blow your whole lawn
like out in the street. I use it totally, so
it's just to blow my leaves off my deck back
into my yard. You know who hates the sound of
the leaf blower almost violently? Is David Spade? Really? Yeah?
(41:07):
If you follow my Instagram, probably one out of every
five posts is like him, just like ripping into some
guy who's using a leaf blower over like on the
other end of his neighborhood. He hates leaf blowers. We'll
have to exchange brands because I don't know if your's
as good. But I got a great cordless battery powered
(41:28):
blower that's super powerful. I used the de Walt battery power.
It's pretty great. Okay, what do you use? I can't
remember the name of it. Have to good. Look. Is
it one of those like Eco ones or Orange? Is
probably husk Varnae Echo No, no, no no, no, it's not
one of those big brands. I think it's like works
like w O r xx. Yeah. Yeah, they're good too. Boy,
(41:50):
I was always like, uh, those battery power and don't
have the juice you need, but these have to do. Now,
Yeah they have. I mean I've got a battery powered
lawn mower that I charged one time and still just
cuts like crazy, like you know, a year after the
first time I charged it. They definitely would. That's what
I got to if they last a long time. So um, chuck.
One thing you said about blowing leaves out into the
(42:11):
yard around into like like your curb or something like that,
or even raking them up and like like removing them,
like that is where firefly lava live. So you're removing
the firefly lava from your yard to god knows where,
probably not someplace where they're going to be cared for
and repopulate, probably going to die in the bargain. So yes,
(42:32):
if you're if you really care about your grass, you're
not just gonna leave leaves on there. But you know,
if you have garden beds, you could do that. Apparently
you don't want to clean up your garden in the fall.
You want to just leave it as is over the winter,
because that is a habitat for all sorts of great
creatures that keep your soil going, including firefly larva. Um,
(42:52):
and then you clean it up in the spring, and
if you don't do like rake your leaves off of
your lawn, don't just throw them away, like put them
in paper bag and keep them wet, like maybe under
a tree for the winter, and then work them into
the soil in the spring, and you've got a great
yard suddenly for the firefly larva that you just kind
of helped nurture over the winter. Yeah. Plus it's great
(43:15):
for your garden beds. It's just really super rich, uh,
good stuff, it really is. What else you said, Basically,
you don't want to cut down those trees to give
yourself a golf course view. You want to kind of
leave parts of your yard wild too, right, Yeah, I
mean my backyard now is a little too wild for
my taste. Um, it's pretty crazy. Oh man, I gotta
(43:37):
come over and see it. Yeah, it's you know, Yeah,
i mean, Emily went nuts planning things over the past
few years, and it's just, uh, it's something else. It's
like it's it feels like a a science experiment going
on back there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, we let it
go wild. But you can just let parts of your
like designate a corner of your yard and let that
(44:00):
kind of go a little bit crazy. Remember remember when
we studied dar one years ago, how he would just
let everything go crazy because he could just study so
much more stuff. Yeah, and like if you have like
a tree line or something on the fringes of your yard,
let that go crazy. Let it grow out a little
bit more, like you know, like leave some of the
shrubs you think are kind of ugly that are growing
(44:20):
in there, or replace them with native shrubs even better,
or like it can be as simple as if a
tree falls down in your yard and it's not like
covering the grass, just leave it where it is and
let it rock. That's a great firefly habitat right there. Totally.
The final thing you can do, well, there's a couple
of things. But turn those lights off. You've got big
(44:41):
old yard spotlights. I don't know what you're doing, but
no one wants that. Your neighbors don't want that. Fireflies
don't want that. Uh, nobody likes that. At least put
them on like a motion sensitive thing that turns off
after like a minute. Yeah, yeah, that's that's fine, But yeah,
turn those lights off. Try and make it dark. And
then this last thing is something and I'm really bummed
that I missed out on this year. I did not
(45:02):
know about it, but I'm definitely gonna sign up. It's
called the Vanishing Firefly Project, and what they do is
offer up an app that's for free and you on
three different days they have a census June six, July four,
in August one where you go out and you count
(45:22):
fireflies or lightning bugs in your yard for a certain
amount of time and then enter that into the census
and they're getting a pretty robust like body of data
from this. Yeah, there's another group called Firefly Watch from
the Museum of Science in Boston, UM and they have
an even more extensive census. But it's basically like citizen
(45:43):
scientists contributing to too much needed data because, like we
were saying, all the stuff about the fireflies vanishing is
anecdotal um and only now our researchers really starting to
turn to studying the issues so we can figure out
what the biggest problems are and how to aviate them
so we don't lose fireflies because nobody wants that. I
(46:04):
don't care how nihilistic you are, I don't care how
little you care about anything. If you stopped and really
searched your feelings, you would find that you don't want
a world without fireflies. Agreed or lightning bugs. Agreed even more,
And I have to say, Chuck, I really feel like
we brought the country together much needed by using both
(46:27):
fireflies and lightning bugs in this episode. Agreed. Okay, Well,
since Chuck said agreed at least three times, it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this hot off the presses.
Hey guys, this is Kelsey from Chico, California. I'm a
counselor and professor at local community college and I've never
(46:49):
gotten sarcasm. My family is very blunt, and if anyone
is sarcastic, well I wouldn't know it. I start all
my classes. That was sarchasm, right, don't think so? I
start all my classes explaining that I'm being genuine. And
if you think I said something sarcastic, I didn't. But
in the podcast you mentioned the individuals that are neuro
(47:10):
uh atypical might not get sarcasm. My friends who work
in special education of totally used hand signs with me
when they're being sarcastic in your podcast, which I've listened
to from the beginning. I only know Josh is being
sarcastic when I think that was kind of mean, and
then Chuck giggles a little bit. That's the tell I guess. Yeah. Uh.
(47:33):
When my husband is sarcastic and he gets a double laugh,
meaning he laughs at himself for the joke, I do
that a lot and then giggles a little when he
has to explain it to me, that's when I know
he's being sarcastic. Uh. Anyway, you two are great and
often use your podcast as another form of learning in
my courses. And that is from Kelsey. Thanks a lot, Kelsey,
(47:55):
thanks for pointing all that out because I hadn't really
realized how they could be in parted. But Chuck is
my sarcasm Beard. Everybody, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Uh. Well,
we appreciate Kelsey too for writing in. And if you
want to be like Kelsey, you can send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at i heeart radio dot com.
(48:21):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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