For about a month prior to that there are plenty of “early bugs” who crawl up out of the ground, leave the woods blinking and then fly off into the meadows. It has always been from north to south when I have seen it. One wave of light after another, starting way out of my sight somewhere to the north and traveling south far out of sight in the woods. As they do, suddenly a wave of lights flash like a wave of water through a lake. Eventually they get out of synch and they make a concerted effort to resync. Some of the bugs uphill were near the ground while others downhill might be 10 feet off the ground. They were also mainly on one level and this level was even for as far as I walked in 20 minutes. Inside the forest were hundreds of thousands of lightening bugs all flashing at one time. I first noticed the lights when I went to the site of our house in April, 1997 and saw so many lights coming out of the woods that I went to take a closer look. The woods are growing on the Natchez Trace Historic Parkway and are as protected as the Smoky Mountains are. It looks like a creature from hell, where it must be bent on returning(Opens in a new browser tab) The Southern Appalachians: Salamanders Galore(Opens in a new browser tab) More articles on natural life in Great Smoky Mountains:īald is beautiful(Opens in a new browser tab) More info on the Smoky Mountain fireflies here and here more info on bioluminescent spots around the world on the Atlas bioluminescent spots page. As this curious phenomenon remained undiscovered for years, it is quite possible that there are other varieties of fireflies blinking in unison throughout the United States, perhaps even in your own backyard.
In 1995, scientists confirmed the existence of the Great Smoky Mountain synchronized fireflies, and have subsequently discovered other populations in the Congaree Swamp in South Carolina and other high altitude locations in the Appalachian mountains. “We have a cabin in Elkmont… and as far as we know, it is only in this small area that this particular type of group synchronized lightning bug exists. They exhibit 6 seconds of total darkness then in perfect synchrony, thousands light up 6 rapid times in a 3 second period before all going dark for 6 more seconds. These bugs “start up” in mid June at 10 pm nightly.
I am sure you are aware of this, but just in case, there is a type of group synchrony lightning bug inside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Elkmont, Tennessee. She wrote a letter to a Steven Strogratz, a Cornell mathematician who studies synchronization: The American fireflies were first brought to the attention of scientists by a reader of Science News, who thought it odd that an article on Asian firefly synchronicity mentioned nothing about the bugs near her own home. Long thought to be an exclusively Southeast Asian phenomenon, the dazzling behavior was only discovered in an American firefly species (P. One of the best spots to see them is in one small area, near the Little River Trailhead in Elkmont, TN. The fireflies, who can sense when their neighbor fireflies are flashing and attempt to flash before them, send waves of light to cascading down the Tennessee hillsides. Carolinus fireflies begin to blink in beautiful, astonishing unison. Happening right now, and for the next few days, the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee will light up as P. The following post ran originally on Boing Boing. Thuras is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World’s Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer. Please welcome guest blogger Dylan Thuras.
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