Safari Expert Captured Bamboo Barks Glowing Like Never Before in a Dense Forest
Over billions of years of evolution, fungi have invaded nearly 2% of Earth’s biomass. However, lurking deep within the shadow of this squishy creature is an “evil genius,” as the BBC describes. As cunning as this behaviour might sound, fungi hold a cult status, with the ability to control insect brains for their notorious reproductive agendas, such as spreading their spores. As it sits atop the limbs and the skeleton of the forests, it feeds on rotting barks, dying wood from fallen branches, and fallen leaves, embossing an internet-like network, like a “wood wide web.”
However, despite its clever brain control tactics, fungus contributes something so precious to nature that can’t be taken for granted: the beauty of light. Safari specialist Kopal Thakur (@kopalthakur) recently shared a clip from the heart of India’s Western Ghats forests. The clip shows bamboo barks illuminated in a faint green glow. Western Ghats, also known as Sahyadri Hills, are one of the richest wet rainforests of India. With relentless rains pouring through slippery slopes, the jungles are a treacherous ride. Yet, when the skies go dark, parts of these jungles come alive with radiant luminosity exuded by organisms like bioluminescent fungi.
“In the forests of Western Ghats, magic still exists; we call it the #bioluminescence,” Thakur wrote in the video caption. The shots, he revealed, were captured while he was traveling through a herping trail in the forest during peak monsoon season, along with his friend, a Mumbai-based explorer Mahesh Diaries (@fossil__the_mysterious). Despite the crazy downpour, he said, they came across several stunning “bamboo pit vipers,” “some very beautiful moths,” “a painted bat,” and “bioluminescent fungi growing on tiny twigs,” among other things.
The striking clip shows two frames, one with the “lights on” and the second with the “lights off.” The “light on” scene shows a patch of damp wood, wet leaves, and rotting bamboo bark. The following scene, with the “lights off,” shows everything blanked out of the picture except for the bamboo barks, with a surreal neon green glow. In the caption, the explorer revealed that the glow was likely coming from “Fungai idee; Mycena genus” that coated and clung to the bark. “Magic sticks,” he called them. Viewers called the scene by expressions like “magical wood” and “nature’s wonder.”
As it turns out, this glowing scenery is not unusual in the forestlands of Western Ghats, also called the “western coast of India.” Stretching for 994 miles from the state of Gujarat to the southern region of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the Western Ghats are almost always soaked in the wild showers of rain, per the BBC. Its jungles are home to wild animals like tigers, leopards, the elusive black panther, and the world’s largest population of wild Asian elephants. The tropical and temperate conditions of these jungles make them a fascinating territory for organisms like fungi to grow and thrive.
According to an explanation by the Harvard Museum of Natural History, bioluminescence is a chemical reaction triggered by a compound in the body of the organism. When this chemical, called “luciferin,” comes in contact with a catalyst called “luciferase,” in collaboration with oxygen molecules, the reaction produces a compound called “oxi-luciferin”, which generates enormous amounts of photons, thereby creating “light.” This one act of producing “glowing light” reimburses all the notorious acts that fungus does, including eating up buildings, killing innocent plants, hijacking abandoned houses, and insect mind control.
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