Firefly Facts to Wow the Kids

_Elsa_

Before closing her computer her eye catches one more article.

‘Fireflies don’t really need help being more interesting — they are bugs that light up! — but the more you learn about them, the more fascinating they become.

Here are a few fun facts to wow the family:

• Fireflies blink for the same reason that songbirds sing — to attract a mate; each firefly species has its own blinking pattern, and you can use that to identify the type you’ve spotted. One of the most well-known fireflies is The Big Dipper Firefly (Photinus pyralis), which has a prolonged, dipping flashing pattern.

• Fireflies also light up to let predators know that they’re toxic. While they aren’t a threat to you or your kids, to a potential predator, they could be deadly. In one odd case, a pet owner fed fireflies to his pet lizard, and it died.

• If you’re in the eastern US, all of the fireflies you find in the air will be males. The females blink back from the ground and usually don’t fly.

• Instead of the on-again, off-again flashing patterns that most of us are familiar with, synchronous fireflies put on a special show: male fireflies all blink at once, followed by the return signal from the females. Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee is famous for its annual spectacle of synchronous fireflies; tens of thousands of people flock there each year to see them.’ (Source)

That’s it! Tiffi has more than enough information to explain to her friends what these little bugs are all about. Yeti also plans to share what he found online too.

Let’s continue - Tonight they are going to look for lightning bugs

Start at the beginning – Tiffi learns all about lightning bugs