Hey it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I grew up here in Alabama, like most kids in the area, learning how to catch lightning bugs and putting them in a jar. It’s a magical memory that most of us share. But today, on Smarter Every Day, we’re going to try to capture that childlike joy in a new way because we’ve been invited to do something very, very special. Let’s throw the family in the car and let’s go get smarter every day.

Hey, I’m Destin. Nice to meet you. So this is Robin Taylor. He invited me to come see the synchronous fireflies that I’ve never heard of.

Destin: What do they do?

Robin: They synchronize their blinks.

Destin: On or off?

Robin: Well, both, actually.

Destin: That all turn on?

Robin: No, they they turn. They will. The whole forest will turn on. They’ll blink at the same time.

Destin: Really?

Robin: And then they’ll go off, and then they’ll blink at the same time.

Destin: I didn’t know that was a thing.

Robin: That’s the thing.

Destin: I had no idea.

Robin: So it’s just going to be a creek when we get up there. But it’s real lush vegetation all around the creek, and it’s just a perfect moist hardwood forest, and that’s what they love.

Destin: The fireflies love the moist hardwood forest?

Robin: And we there this species is pretty rare. We just found these about four years ago. Just because we weren’t looking. I thought I’d seen a couple out here before at a house that was improved, and they cut down all the trees. So my son and I just said, well, let’s go check out upstream.

Destin: And they were there?

Robin: and they were there. And it’s getting bigger every year.

Destin: All right, let’s do it. All right, you ready? All right. Who’s out? He’s going.

Robin: Is this everybody?

Destin: This is everybody?

Robin: OK, let’s go find some. You do? I’ve got I’ve got four or five flashlights, right?

Destin: I feel like we’re on an adventure?

Robin: We are like Jurassic Park. Jurassic bug! haha

Destin: This feels a little bit magic, doesn’t it?

Destins’ Daughter: YEAH! Are the flyerflies only going to be out at dark dark?

Destin: Yes…..this feels like a real adventure going off road

Destins’ son: Oh! I saw a firefly!

Destin: Did you really?

Guys, you all know how beautiful Alabama is. As soon as we get in the woods, I realized it was very, very dark. So I just as the shutter speed on the camera, which made some of the video look really blurry, like this.

Robin: Last couple of nights, this area on this side of the hill has been going pretty good.

Destin: OK

Destin: We’ve got all these fireflies that are going to come out, so don’t turn your lights on to Mr. Robin says so. So we’re we’re kind of in his house. ok?

Robin: We’re in the Lord’s house.

Destin: We are in the Lord’s house.

Destins’ Daughter: Why is your light on?

Destin: Is it on?

Destin: It’s a camera. I’m sorry.

Robin: I don’t understand nature. I mean, these things will be they’ll be dormant. I mean, just you won’t see anything. And all of a sudden, somehow they know when to start rising.

Destin: Really?

Robin: Yes. They’ll just all of a sudden, they’ll start coming up.

Destin: That was weird. I’ve never seen that.

Robin: What happened? There’s a firefly right there. Look at him blinking.

Robin: He’s going crazy.

Destin: Is that normal?

Robin: Yeah. They’re going to. And it may be a snappy sync or not. We got some behind us.

Dest But this is a really cool spot.

I used to think that all lightning bugs had the same light signature, which was a slow ramp up and then a short period of light that fizzled out. However, when I was in the woods with Robin, I saw something different. This lightning bug was flashing quickly, on and off in a continuous pulse. This was a new discovery for me and I found out that there are actually different flash patterns for different species of lightning bugs. Lynn Foust has a book with a graph that shows all the different species and their flash patterns. When I returned to the woods a year later with my buddy Trent and some cameras, we were able to capture the lightning bugs in their synchronized blinking. It was amazing to see how they all eventually got in sync and spread across the whole area. But man, it was working.

OK, so here’s a little guy right here. They don’t move that much. One thing that I don’t understand is the bioluminescence is chemical. It’s like a rocket propellant and when the two chemicals touch, they fire off a minute amount, creating energy. Trent and Robin were amazed and Destin explained that these fireflies were different from the ones in the Smokies, because they all turn on and off at the same time. Destin then tried to capture one with a jar, but it flew away. He then looked at its abdomen and noticed that the fireflies were using some kind of energy to synchronize. Scientists don’t know how they synchronize, but they do know it starts in one part of the forest and then spreads to other parts. To test this, Destin and Trent tried using LEDs, with a function generator and chartreuse LEDs. When they ramped up the frequency to 10 Hz or down to 3 Hz, the fireflies broke synchrony, but when they went back to 5 Hz, they came back in. The camera wasn’t doing the experiment justice, but Destin knew it was working because of the snappy sync. So, if you want to help a kid you love, please consider going to Kiwi Co dot com /smarter50 and get 50% off your first month of any crate.

Maybe it was a massive case of cognitive bias, but for my money, it felt like it was real so I would love for this to be studied more in the future. The next night, we came out with more cameras with the goal of capturing the beauty of what was going on. We had image stabilization on the camera this time and a Me20F-SH camera that could do infrared and a pan tilt unit with keyframes. After setting up the video camera, Robin and I started taking still photos as the light started to fade away.

Robin said, “This is downright magical. This feels like childhood.”

Destin replied, “I do too. I’ve got about four or five in here. Yeah, I want to let them slowly crawl out. All right, guys, you’re free. Here you go.”

Destin continued, “I hope you’re not upset with my videography in this video, but the truth is, this is one of those things you just have to see. Now, if you want to see it for yourself you’ll be tempted to just Google synchronous fireflies and drive your car straight to the parking lot that Google tells you to go to. I encourage you not to do that because these things are all over the place. I encourage you to research and figure out when fireflies come out in your area and what environment they like to live in. Once you figure that out, get away from the city lights, find a spot just like Robin did and go out when it’s dark and make observations for yourself. We just found these about four years ago just because we went looking.”

Destin then asked Robin, “You have a childlike wonder about you, don’t you?”

Robin replied, “I’ve tried to never grow up. Does that sound weird?”

Destin said, “No, not at all. I get that from my dad and his. His brothers is you know, stay active and just, you know, get out and do things and enjoy yourself. So, yeah, you’re good at it. I appreciate it. I’m taking notes.”

Destin concluded, “This video is about childlike joy. I hope you feel that. That was kind of what I was trying to communicate with it. The fact that as you grow up, it’s important not to lose that spark. And that’s what Kiwi Co does. Kiwi Co is something that my kids have grown up with for years. There’s these little boxes that come to your house, and it has all the stuff you need to build a really cool project. And I love it. I like to this day, I still love making simple little things like this, and I like making complex things. So if you want to instill a sense of joy, of creating things into the hearts of your children or a child you love, please consider going the Kiwi Co.com/smarter50 that gets you 50% off your first month of any crate. There’s nine different lines you can choose from, so you can tailor the joyful experience for the kid that you love. No matter where the kid is at. There is a perfect project that Kiwi Co has ready to go that’s going to teach them awesome steam principles science, technology, engineering, arts and math. My kids have grown up playing with Kiwi co boxes for years and we love them. They’ve genuinely helped our family. My kids are super confident now, using their hands, doing all kinds of things. They’re not intimidated when I tell them to do something that’s a little bit out of their reach, they just grab the tool and they go for it. And Kiwi Co has a lot to do with that. So, if you want to help a kid you love, please consider going to Kiwi Co dot com /smarter50 and get 50% off your first month of any crate.” If you’d like to check out the 50% off deal for the first month of any crate from Kiwi Cocom, you’re really going to enjoy it! The camera is incredibly sensitive and can even switch to infrared mode. We can even use Face ID to unlock a phone and see the 3D laser scanner in action.

Almost 70,000 people have signed up for the Smarter Every Day email list, which is totally amazing. All that I do is send a link to the new video when it’s uploaded. If you’re interested in joining the email list, you can find the link on the Smarter Every Day website or in the video description.

No pressure at all, but thank you for watching this video and thank you to all the patrons who support Smarter Every Day. Have a good one!