An evening with a lighting bug!!!

In my last post I had posted details about this event. Luckily I got a chance to attend it. Host for this event was Scenic area association and local Committee of young people measures at Senzouku-ike. This event started 8 years ago by local people in an effort to show fireflies to their children. Now they have started doing this at a larger scale. Staff bought 3000 fireflies from Chiba prefecture and put them for public viewing at the pond. I was amazed to see thousands of fireflies fluttering in the pitch darkness near the pond. The beauty of hotaru (firefly or lightning bug) is that it emits fluorescent light on its lower abdomen. They use this light to attract mate or prey. One can easily see them in darkness with their fluorescence. They inhabit in clean water.

On talking to host. I learnt  few facts about hotaru. There are roughly 2000 species of firefly in the world. They are well-known in hundreds of different cultures. Because of this, they are called by many common names. Here are just a few of the many names of fireflies called in different parts of the world.

• Lightning bug
• Glow worm
• Golden sparkler
• Minna Minni (Malayalam-South of India)
• Jugnu जुगनू  (Hindi)
• Hotaru ホタル(Japanese)
• 螢火蟲  Chinese
• 개똥벌레 Korean
• Lucciola (Italian)

The name for this species of  firefly is  “Heike Hotaru”

They sometime fall asleep and the lights goes off when they are sleeping. To avoid this staff spray water and shake there baskets slowly so that they keep emitting florescent light. Fireflies have a life span of only one week!! It's such a pity, isn't it? Such a beautiful and bright creature survives just for a week!!!
Once the event was over these fireflies were set free in the ko-ike pond - back to mother nature.

Fireflies bring feeling of summers!!
See you until next time!! Minna nastsu oo tanoshii ni shitte ne!!