Glow worms are funny little creatures that like cool, damp, dark places. You often find them in caves, but can also find them under mossy canopies or the undersides of upturned trees. There are a few places in New Zealand where you can pay upwards of $50 to go and see some, or you can keep your eyes peeled and your flashlights off and find them yourself for free.
After settling into our hotel of the day and refueling at the local watering hole (actually had surprisingly delicious food), we went for an evening walk through the woods (or the bush as they call it here). The moon was helpful in allowing us to turn our phones and lights off without straying from the path. In caves you typically look up to find the glow-worms and it looks as though it's a night sky, full of stars. Here, we looked down and straight ahead. At times, it felt a bit like cruising through Space Mounain at Universal Studios. With the different dimensions and sizes of the trees that the glow-worms rest on, they created quite a cool scene.
They're a bit tricky to photograph, but the photo above shows what they actually look like in their stringy form. If I understand them correctly, the light they emit is actually some form of waste bundled up in a web-like string. The light fades and brightens based on how much oxygen they give it (bioluminescence). When they're hungry, the light gets brighter, thereby attracting more bugs into their web-like string. When they're well fed (or scared) the light fades and you can't see them anymore.
The photo below is a long exposure to show the glow-worms and what they're sitting on. To the naked eye it just looks like a bunch of little lights or stars, but with the long exposure you can see that they're actually on the bottom of an uprooted tree.
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