Firefly synchonized fast flashing
June 14, 2011 6:40 pm
I live in North Texas by a public park. Last night (June 13th) I noticed that the fireflies were flashing at an extremely high rate (faster than anything I have seen so far on You Tube) and they were all in sync, sometimes two would pair up in their flight patterns. They then went dark but started again after about 5 seconds. This happened repeatedly and I would have loved to have stayed longer but my dog insisted that we see to his needs.
The other interesting thing was that this flashing show was continued by other fireflies some distance away (for bugs that is). Thought I had read something about this but realize that it was more about them being synchronized than this “hyper” flashing. Felt like I was in nature’s disco.
Wondered if it was just a variation of their mating display or if it was triggered by some environmental factor.
Signature: Vicki Davis
Hi Vicki,
Thanks for supplying us with your first hand observations on Firefly flashing. Each species of Firefly has a different signal used to attract a mate. While we are unable to provide you with any concrete information on the species you saw, we would guess that this is nothing unusual.
We are very happy to read these responses/ reports. Just spent two nights camping in Brethern MI, Manistee National Forest. We saw white strobe lights around our tent. Scared me. We camped two different sites (dispersed camping, so pretty much no one else around) and saw it both nights. I was going to report it to the ranger but now I know it was a beetle- a lightening bug I’ve never seen before. It was later around midnight- 2 am. As the other reports.
I saw the tiny strobe light UFO’s light night. I would say a firefly but they did not move like fireflies. One in particular remained in the the stay place for several seconds like it was fixated in space. The others not far from it lag around and then began to move away. Eventually they seem to just vanish….The cool strobe lights were so strong they appeared to have have a glow around them in the shape of a ball. It was astonishing to me.