Glowing in the Dark

Date with the nocturnal creatures of Netravali.

There are so many worlds beyond the human world that are in plain sight but hidden. This particularly struck me when I went scuba-diving for the first time. Ten metres underwater in the Arabian Sea and surrounded by prickly plants, corals, and hundreds of fish swimming past me, I was in awe that there was an entire world that existed beneath the waves that we’re so oblivious to as we go about our lives. 

I felt the same way when I went for a night walk through the Netravali Wildlife Sanctuary in South Goa with a naturalist from Mrugaya Xpeditions. We ventured into the forest at dusk, wearing raincoats and with torches in hand, listening to the croaks of bush frogs and looking for anything that nature had to offer. While the rain-kissed beauty of Goa and the Western Ghats are well-known, the forests too come alive in the monsoons, particularly at night.  

As we walked along the slippery trail, still wet from the day-long showers, we spotted five types of frogs – bush frogs, skittering frogs, tree frogs, burrowing frogs, and the elusive Malabar gliding frogs that glide from branch to branch of trees during the monsoons. We saw numerous spider webs with spiders attempting to catch their prey, including the giant wood spider. We also spotted a giant millipede, a hump-nosed pit viper, a snail eating a polka-dotted caterpillar, several scorpions, fireflies, geckos, slugs, stick insect, and a blue forest tree crab, to name a few.

Spider webs © Ila Reddy

Dragon fly, giant millipede, snail eating a caterpillar, hump-nosed viper © Ila Reddy

Bush frog, stick insect, blue forest crab © Ila Reddy

And then there was the fungi. We found lots of bracket fungi and some cup mushrooms. But the winner of the night was the glowing Mycena fungi.

Found only during the monsoon months, bioluminescent Mycena fungi emit a faint fluorescent green glow that is visible when it’s pitch dark. They light up due to a chemical reaction that involves luciferin and molecular oxygen, and it’s unclear why they have this characteristic.

Fungi © Ila Reddy

Watching the branches with Mycena fungi glow in the dark, with the sound of flowing water from a nearby stream as background sound, was truly enchanting – somewhat like a scene straight out of a fantasy novel or movie. I didn’t have my DSLR camera and tripod with me to capture this mesmerising sight, but I’ve included a photograph from the web to give you a sense of what it looked like in the dark!

Bioluminiscent Mycena fungi (photo sourced from the web)

Although I didn’t spend the night in the forest, the few hours spent exploring it on foot and meeting many nocturnal creatures along the way reminded me of this gem of a poem by Mary Oliver, so I will sign off with her words:

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

–  Mary Oliver

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