Right before we exited the cave we came to a huge cavern where we turned off our lights to get a good look at the glowworms. We had seen glowworms throughout the cave, but in this cavern there were thousands of them and it looked like a starry sky. Collectively they gave off enough light that we could see around the cavern. Ian told us all the gory details behind the glowworms, which he informed us was really a nice way of saying we were looking at "shiny shit". The glowworms are the larvae stage of a fungus gnat. They don't have a hole in their rear end and the photoluminescence comes from the chemicals used to break down their waste. Their food source comes from insects that are attracted to their light and become trapped and paralyzed in the long sticky threads the larvae hang from their body. The larvae stage is the only point in the gnat's life cycle that it has a mouth, so it has to eat a lot in this stage to store up energy. When it's ready, the larvae uses the sticky threads as sort of a coccoon and a few weeks later a gnat emerges. The gnats only live for a few days and all they do is mate. Before the gnats die, they often fly into the sticky threads and provide food for the other larvae. The females lay their eggs and when the first larvae hatch from the eggs they will eat some of the other eggs to get going and start giving off light.

We took one last group shot right after we left the cave. From here we walked upstream a bit and then followed a trail on land back to our van. The cave trip was a fun adventure!