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 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, 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, and uh, what we can do about it? Right after this, Chuck, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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? 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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? 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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,