Hello family, I am Vibhu & today I am back again with a Science-Blog after a while. Today's topic is “How does a fire- fly glows during night?”, I know most of you already know the answer but some of us doesn't so let us find out how does this happen.

Everyone, especially children gets amazed seeing the light coming out of fire flies during night. Young age children become happy & astonished at the same time seeing them. We at our young age used to catch them either to keep them in a transparent bottle or in our fist and watch them glow. It was just a fun activity for us, we used to keep all the possible precautions not to hurt them.

From an early time scientists too wanted to figure out ‘How does this glow or light comes out of the body of fire fly?’ & ‘Why does this happens?’

Introduction to Fire-Fly : 

Fire fly is actually a flying arthropod insect. Both male & female counterparts of this insect have wings. They are soft bodied & black colored insects. Their mode of survival is actually eating microbes & sucking nectar from flowers. Both male and female fire flies radiates light from their body in a flash light like manner that means they glows interruptidly. There are special light radiating organs at their back beneath the stomach area & these organs are controlled by neurons.

Light Emitting Substances : 

The light emitting organs of fire fly contains two chemicals called Luciferin & Luciferase. 

• Luciferin combines with the oxygen to emit light.
• Luciferase helps luciferin in this combination process.
• It means Luciferase acts as a catalyst in this process.
• There is no radiation of heat in this complete process.
• Such type of light emitting process is called Bio-luminescence.

Colour of Light : 

The light radiated from the body of fire flies is of greenish, yellow or orange in colour. Today with the advancement of science, scientists can produce the same light in laboratory. But to do so they have to extract the light producing substances & sometimes the genes from such animals.

Why do they produce/emit light?

There are two basic reasons :

1. There are chances that male & female fire flies produces such light to attract each other.
2. They may also produce it so that other animals, insects & birds do not attack on them.

Whatever be the reason of light production but undoubtedly these insects attracts us very much & creates a magical moment when they do so during night.

This is it for today's post. I hope this was interesting & knowledgeable for you. 

Like this post & Comment your views about it. What do you think? 

I will see you in the next one. Till then take care of yourself and your family. 

Thank You.