28/10/2026
Wildlife Wednesday! (Glow-in-the-dark edition) 🍄🦂
Some organisms glow-in-the-dark, but how do they do it? Either through bioluminescence or biofluorescence. In bioluminescence, an organism produces its own light through an internal chemical reaction, glowing away in total darkness. With biofluorescence, an organism needs a light source to glow: its body absorbs ultraviolet (UV) light – in nature that could be the moon – re-emitting that light in more visible colours.
The Ghost Fungus (Omphalotus nidiformis) is bioluminescent, emitting a soft, ghostly green glow after dark through a chemical reaction between fungal enzymes and oxygen. Although scientists really don’t know why, some think this eerie glow might attract invertebrates and small mammals that feed on the fungi, spreading tiny spores. Why is this fungus, fabulous as it is, featuring in Wildlife Wednesday? Freaky fungi fact: recent DNA work shows that fungi are in fact more closely related to animals than they are to plants!
This scorpion (Cercophonius species), like most scorpions, is biofluorescent, re-emitting UV light as bright blue-green. Again, no one is quite sure why this is, but it may be to hide the scorpion from its prey – scorpions are ambush predators and may be able to sense whether they’re concealed under shelter (and thus hidden from prey) or out and about (more visible to prey).
Did you know that platypuses, wombats and bilbies are also biofluorescent? Want to know more? Stay tuned!
Photos: Anne/JenolanCaves
