Synchronizing Fireflies Visualizer

If you watch Fireflies closely, some species will sync up their flashing to eventually blink as a group. Pretty mesmerizing stuff. But how to they do it?

So, how do thousands of fireflies pick a leader to follow, a maestro to keep their flashing in time? The answer, the scientists found, is simple: They don’t.

Nicky Case created a tool which explains and visualizes how it works. By default they all blink individually, but once you hit the “Nudge thy neighbour” option on, you’ll see them sync up.

Fireflies →

Via Kottke — Be sure to watch the video if you want to know more about spontaneous synchronization

Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

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