Light & rhythm

Firefly Grove

A hundred little lights. No conductor. Can the grove find a shared rhythm?

0%rhythm alignment

0glowing now · of 160

Alignment measures how closely the flash cycles match.

Synchronisation 1.8× Neighbour reach 12 Rhythm variation 8% Glow brightness 1.0×

Set Synchronisation to Off, then scatter. Turn it up again and watch neighbouring lights fall into step. Try 3× to see the pattern develop.

Collective light · last 30 seconds

An illustrative model inspired by synchronous fireflies. Glow brightness changes only the view.

body > main { display: none; }.simulation-fallback { max-width: 720px; margin: auto; padding: 24px; line-height: 1.6; }.simulation-fallback img { width: 100%; height: auto; }← Explore all worlds

Firefly Grove

Little lights find a shared rhythm in a moonlit grove. Scatter their flashes, change how neighbours influence each other, and watch synchronisation emerge.

Golden fireflies glowing around a small pond in a dark green woodland beneath the Moon.

Enable JavaScript in a browser with WebGL 2 to run this interactive simulation.

Some firefly species can coordinate their flashes. Here, little lights gradually adjust their timing to their neighbours.

Each firefly starts with its own flash cycle. Nearby neighbours pull those cycles closer together, so patches of matching light can grow.
Synchronisation controls how strongly fireflies adjust their timing. Off lets every firefly keep its own rhythm.
Neighbour reach changes the distance over which clocks interact. Rhythm variation makes their natural speeds more or less different.
Rhythm alignment measures how closely the cycles match. A high value can mean the whole grove is dark together between flashes. The chart shows the average light over time.

Try this: Watch at 3×, then scatter the flashes and let the grove find its rhythm again. Compare Synchronisation Off with strong synchronisation using the same seed. Glow brightness changes only the view. This is a simplified clock model, not a recreation of any one firefly species.