New Zealand glowworm
The New Zealand glowworm is not a worm at all, but the larva of a small gnat. It glows with a magical blue-green light. Thousands of them on a cave ceiling look like a sky full of stars.
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Fun facts
It hangs down up to 30 silk threads, each dotted with little sticky drops.
It starts glowing as soon as it hatches from its egg.
Its MΔori names are pΕ«rΔtoke, from the word for glowing, and titiwai, which means lights reflected in water.
People first thought it was a glowing beetle, until a teacher showed in 1886 that it was the larva of a gnat.
Most of its life is spent as a larva, up to a year. The grown-up gnats live for only three or four days.
Most asked questions about New Zealand glowworm
?Why do glowworms glow?
Their blue-green light attracts small flying insects, which get stuck on the glowworm's sticky threads.
?Where can you see New Zealand glowworms?
In caves like the famous Waitomo caves, and on damp, sheltered banks in New Zealand's forests.
?Is a glowworm a worm?
No. It is the larva of a small fly called a fungus gnat.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arachnocampa luminosa
- Named by
- Skuse, 1891
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Keroplatidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Keroplatidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Glowworm
Where the facts come from
- Arachnocampa luminosa (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Alan Rockefeller. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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