A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
One of the more annoying things about living in Florida is that we have closely related animals that are nearly identical, but they don't have glow-butts. (At least not down in the bottom half of the state.)
I'll wait for someone from like Lakeland to say they have them.
where do those critters live anyways? I'm pretty sure I've never seen one...
Never saw one IRL
lightning bugs were cool.
Haven't seen em in a while now that i think about it.
Because we killed them all. Pesticides, climate change, lawns... They're dying out along with basically all bugs.
They used to be indigenous where I lived. Now they are not. I suppose they cannot live on concrete, who would have thought...
Driving at 60mph through giant swarms is like traveling at warp speed.
We used to have thousands of these in my backyard as a kid every summer. Now I rarely see them. We've done a great job at destroying our ecosystems in record time. We're so fucked
The powers that be want us to go straight from "let's vote harder" to "it's over". There's a huge range of fucked we can be - if what is lost is worth crying over, then what's left is worth fighting over.
There are still some areas where they are common, they're just more hidden now because the species is adverse to light pollution I'm pretty sure.
I was into my 30's by the time I discovered fireflies were real. I was well aware there were bioluminescent creatures in the world but I thought fireflies just reflected light until I moved to the Midwest. They are an amazing sight when you've never seen them before.
I heard a story that back in the 80s there were some foreign diamond salesmen that came in around the 4th of July. I forget their nationality, but they had never seen fireflies before. They got invited to a fireworks display, and someone there showed them that when you squish a firefly it leaves a glowing smear.
Anyway they scurry off to look at fireflies for a while, everyone else watches the fireworks. No one really pays them any mind until they come back to the crowded area, and suddenly everyone is noticing that they’ve given themselves glowing war-paint.
I wanna say they were Japanese, but google says there are fireflies in Japan. Maybe they were just real goofy guys. Either way it’s an insane energy to bring to a party and I think about it a lot.
Ah I love lightning bugs! My backyard will be beautiful in a few weeks 💛
I miss them. 😭🥹
I've always called them fireflies growing up but it seems like that's dependent on where you grew up
Wow, didn't know they were poisonous
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Super accurate as in NJ I've heard both names used interchangeably.
In French they're called lucioles and I find that very cute
Orangutan
Curious what country, article is from Rochester NY it seems
I get the same from central europe, so i think gdpr shenanigans
Like the bugs 😭
Wow I would not believe my eyes...
You would not believe your eyes
If ten million lightning bugs
'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand fireflies
I live in rural Oklahoma and they are gonna start popping off in my back yard any week now. I love sitting in my yard on a warm summer night watching them come in by the hundreds. I heard they are becoming endangered though idk
Yep turns out frequent use of pesticides kills the bugs we like just as well as the bugs we don’t like :/
Truly magical critters. Used to be at Gran's farm as a kid and catch em in your hands. Fields were just covered in em. Great memories.
Haven't been back in ages... I wonder how it's looking these days.
Dark
Unfortunately, good chance of that. :l
Maybe let that one stay a memory unless Gran's still there and should be visited, I have an inkling it's going to be disappointing
Still ought to visit Uncle & Aunt who currently reside there, but yeah news of dwindling numbers is a bummer for sure...
Glad I'm not the only one raised to say lightning bugs instead of fireflies
Sweet Mother Old Appalachia :)