Imagine you are lost, flying through a black night in a vast world, blown by fierce winds and hunted by strange creatures. Wild and disorientated, you stumble into a cave, and seek sanctuary there. It is a dark, wet place, but you only have to survive until daylight.
And then you look up, and see the stars. And you think that you are saved….
Glowworms are essentially a magical fantasy creature that wandered into our world by mistake. They are unlikely and unreasonable, and I am extremely fond of them for the following reasons.
They imitate the night sky…
Glowworms, which live only in caves and riverbanks in New Zealand, are the larvae of a species of gnat. As the name suggests, they are indeed wormlike while in larval form.
They live in large colonies, clinging to cave ceilings, and oh how they glow. They glow so brightly, in fact, that at first glance it’s easy to miss all those oh-so-fine silk strands.
Millions and millions of yards of silk, wet and sticky, dangling overhead. The fact that all this knotless netting is hidden in the dim light is no accident. It’s there for a purpose.
Glowworms are enthralling to watch, but at the end of the day they are larvae. And larvae only really have one job in life: to EAT. Unlike fireflies (which are an unrelated type of beetle) glowworms use bioluminescence not for mating but for hunting. In this way, they are more like angler fish. The light is their bait–the silk is their lure. Even at close range, their traps are quite beautiful to see, like strands of pearls or the crystals of a chandelier.
These threads are essentially fishing lines. Each worm drops its own thread…
…and waits patiently to reel in its catch…
…which it then consumes alive.
And this is where the glowworm gets its scientific name, Arachnocampa luminosa, or more literally: glowing spider-worm. Interestingly, the light-emiting molecule responsible for the glowworm’s luminesences is called luciferen, named for the Latin lucifer, “bringer of light.”
After months of feeding, these larvae will build their cocoons, emerge as adult gnats, live just long enough to lay eggs, and so die. Gradually the eggs hatch, the night sky is reinvented, new constellations are born, and the cycle begins anew.
So remember: this world contains countless miracles of nature, but nature plays by its own dispassionately cruel rules!
When you see the stars, you know you will live. You are a frail thing in a vast world, a sailor in a storming ocean–and like a sailor, you live your life by the stars. You are a navigator, born with wings on your back, born to fly: so you fly. You lift your gaze to the sky and take flight, floating up, up to the stars. You will be home again, you will be safe again, and in the morning the world will be new.
And as you rise to meet the stars, they descend to swallow you.
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