Adventures in New Zealand: Discovering Glowworms in Ruakuri Cave

Prepare to be dazzled as we unlock the secrets of New Zealand's glowworms with the help of our enthusiastic guides, Ruben and Xavier from Ruakuri Cave Tour and Black Water Rafting Company. Imagine creatures that light up the dark with their own living lanterns, dangling mucus fishing lines to ensnare their prey. We'll track these glowing beings from their twinkling larval stage through to their ephemeral adult phase where they exist solely to continue their lineage. 

Step into the hallowed depths of Ruakuri Cave, where the echoes of Maori legends blend with the science of spectacular subterranean formations. Journey with me as we discover the geological marvels within, guided by the insights of  our guides and my niece, Alice. 

We conclude with a glimpse into the lives of our cave and glowworm guides with tales that illuminate the dark—the legends that haunt these spaces, the joys of introducing visitors to its wonders, and the heartfelt dedication to preserving this otherworldly environment. Each story paints a picture of the deep connection between the people who work there and the magical, glowing world they call their office.

Transcript

Glowworms

Speaker 2 0:00

It's not everyone gets to see this every day. It's like a real cool office to work in. Not all get to see glowworms every day, so I think it's just something special, like something different.

Speaker 3 0:10

Yeah, welcome to a very special edition of the Adventures in Learning podcast. I'm currently traveling in New Zealand and today I have a very special episode for you. We are going to learn all about glowworms, and we're going to learn about them from two incredible young men whose enthusiasm for them is it matches mine. So tune in, listen, and I hope you're going to absolutely enjoy everything that Ruben and Xavier have to say. And if you're ever in New Zealand, definitely check out the Rua Curry Cave Tour and Blackwater Rafting Company. All right, without further ado, let's listen. Wonder, curiosity connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. Let's learn about them.

Speaker 1 1:11

So I'll just give you the whole life cycle. I guess That'd be great. So the stage we're there in now is called the larvae stage or the hunting stage, and they're in the stage for around nine to 10 months and what they do in the stage is they hang down lines 10 to 20. This is their fishing lines, how they catch food, and their food comes in from the river, so just any waterborne insects like midges, mayflies and mosquitoes come for the river, they hatch in the river and they go out to the only light source they can see, which is the glowworms, and they get caught in the fishing lines. And the fishing lines are made out of urine and snot. They just reel them up and eat them up. So in that nine to 10 months they catch about four to five insects which are not very, not too much, but they're quite energy efficient as they are, so they don't need much food. And after that nine to 10 months they go into a pupa or a cocoon stage for about two weeks and after that two weeks they hatch out and they come a big flyer and skater.

Speaker 1 2:11

But they've got one problem they were born without a mouth, so they only have three to five days to live. The only thing they can do is reproduce, and that's the sole purpose. As the adult flyers reproduce, so they find a love of their life, go on a honeymoon and make around 24 hours straight until the male dies of exhaustion, yep. And then the female is less by herself to lay around 200 eggs, and groups of 10 to 20. And the reason for the groups of 10 to 20 is after the female lays all the eggs, she also dies of exhaustion. So there's no one to feed the glowers. So the first born is to eat the brothers and sisters.

Speaker 1 2:52

Oh, wow, and then the life cycle continues. So life cycle with glowers is about a year long, just under.

Speaker 3 3:00

And so they use bioluminescence to Yep for the glow Yep, and it's just how that it's like a chemical reaction from the food.

Speaker 1 3:07

They eat proteins and they're having their body.

Speaker 3 3:10

And they're actually not worms, correct?

Speaker 1 3:13

Yeah, so they can in the lab, I said, but then right now they're closely more related to a maggot, so it's a glow maggot when you look at it right now. That's not very appealing to the tourists, so that's why they call it a glow worm.

Speaker 2 3:26

And part of their body is glowing as well.

Speaker 3 3:29

And this is the only place in the world you can find them. Is that right?

Speaker 1 3:33

No, there's a couple places in Australia that has glow worms, different species. America, they don't have glow worms, there's fireflies.

Speaker 3 3:41

Right, we have fireflies.

Speaker 1 3:43

And maybe some places in Europe.

Speaker 3 3:47

So, as we were taken through the caves, our guides stopped and they showed us the most beautiful feeder strands that the glow worms created. Listen to what they had to say. Those are really gorgeous. Hard to believe that's mucus.

Speaker 2 4:07

Yes, some of the castles are like push.

Speaker 3 4:09

Oh, urine was that urine and urine.

Speaker 2 4:12

This is the brown spot. You kind of guess what it is.

Speaker 1 4:15

Yep. So, like when COVID happens, the case will close down and after, like the first, was back. Some of those are lines are about 1.5 meters long.

Speaker 4 4:24

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 4:26

Because we weren't coming fast running them.

Speaker 1 4:28

Yeah, so there was less airflow and they could grow longer, because the shorter they are, the more airflow comes past them.

Speaker 2 4:37

I don't think I wouldn't. I don't know if they're endangered, but impacting them I could say it's us, yeah, Because our breath and our feet walking past those lines, it's angling them and if they don't have any lines, they don't really survive. So I wouldn't say endangered, but I would say something that affects them is us, but also how much rain comes in, especially if rain is too light or as low as rush away. So I think the biggest problem is probably us and I. Okay.

Speaker 1 5:08

Yeah, we're the biggest predators Because there's no bats in here, because there's no enough food for them in here. They live in the bush outside because there's berries more than six. So the only predators that go in is arsenic, suspires and so on.

Speaker 2 5:21

We've got like a wickster, so I could put it in a big stick. Okay, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 5:28

When the lines do tangle, they have to fix them. They're taxing energy and they can die of exhaustion. It's just re-building the other times here.

Speaker 3 5:36

And the adult larva? Do they get caught in their own like I mean the adult flies?

Speaker 1 5:42

They can. They can because they don't have a blow anymore as they adult fly, so they can fly into them. If they're not showing up, they can. They'll just suck them up in the blow and just eat them.

Speaker 2 5:52

Yeah so, yeah, we've had our larva on the lines, we've had a moth come up and they get stuck and they're trying so hard to get out and then you see this glow and they have like a Memphis fruit and it's slide across the wall and pull that line up and we've actually got to try and eat it. Seriously, yeah, me and a llama, or me and a young. Oh, I've seen it twice. It doesn't happen.

Speaker 3 6:14

That's great. One of the things I wasn't prepared for was how incredibly moved I was by how quiet it was in the cave and how absolutely beautiful the glowworms were. As you look at the glowworms from the ceiling up above you and you're studying them, constellations begin to form in your mind. You know I know the scientific explanation for this, but the bioluminescence is just stunning. It's almost like looking at constellations in the sky.

Speaker 1 6:52

It looks like the stars in the mascot.

Speaker 3 6:55

It kind of makes you wonder how those early stories came about, like people saw the stars and made up the stories, like I want to do about the glowworms, yeah, yeah, what color do you see actually?

Speaker 1 7:05

Do you see like green or like blueish?

Speaker 3 7:09

I can see a little bit of. It's kind of a white blue yeah yeah. And then a little bit of sort of a green off to the side in my vision, and some of them are definitely brighter than others.

Speaker 1 7:23

The reason for that is the owl there are. The wild, there are glowworms. Or the hungry there are Hungry, there are oh. Wild there are glowworms, yeah.

Speaker 3 7:32

So they glow because they're brighter, or like if they're hungry they grow brighter, or the owl there, yeah. So it's a way to say come in. It's sort of like a neon sign come and eat. Yeah, it's like.

Speaker 1 7:43

I'm the brightest you know, so that's what I'm talking about, oh, that's interesting.

Exploring the Mysteries of Ruakuri Cave's Geological Formations

Speaker 3 7:49

Nature is fascinating. It really is. What was your reaction the first time you ever saw these?

Speaker 1 7:59

I was surprised that I thought like low was the only part over like the bone. I thought they were really small, but they're actually like sort of worms. Yeah, I was amazed and the formations involved the first time Crazy.

Speaker 3 8:17

So, now that you've met the glowworms, let's learn a little bit more about the cave where we first saw them.

Speaker 1 8:24

So now that you've met the, we're going down the way here. So the first people to discover this cave was about three or four hundred years ago. It was a tribe and the leader was called Tani Teneno the first, and they came over from Kaafir. And they came over from Kaafir just conquer more land. So they stopped in the Rōkūri Resurface and the bush summit, yeah, and so they settled there for the night and they told us some of his tribe members to go out hunting to get all filled up for the next battle. And one of them caught some Kiritu, which is a New Zealand native pigeons, and as he was walking back he attracted a pack of dogs which is quite rare in New Zealand as they're not native here. They were brought over by all these settlers, multi-people, so it was quite a big thing to find dogs. So they attacked them. So he just dropped the birds and ran back to his tribe. And then he told us later and they got a bigger hunting party and they came back and sat in for the dogs, but they were used. So the meat was used for food, bones, jewelry and weapons and the fill was made into a cloak for the leader, tani Tiritu.

Speaker 1 9:37

So when they came back to the dogs. They actually discovered the cave and that's why the name Rua Kuri stands for den of dogs, so it's the meaning behind the name any name there and after that, tani Tiritu and his tribe never lost another battle, so it was quite well known in the Waikirid district. That was the first discovery of the cave, but they never went inside the cave and then when he died, he was laid to rest at the head of the cave with 12 other people, so that's why it's a sacred Pyrrhozon. And, if you guys follow me, the first person to actually go inside the cave was James Holden and 1904, as he won the land above in the ballot. So he found the cave and so he's crying.

Speaker 3 10:22

That's really cool, and how long has it been up into the public?

Speaker 1 10:26

So James Holden had the land from the 19th the cave of the ballot in 1904. And that same year he found the cave and started running tours in 1904 to 1906. And then the government saw the potential in tourism and the Waikirid region especially with the Globun cave as well, and they tried to buy the Holden family out and people owned the Globuns but they refused. And then they went back to Parliament, made some legislations up and pretty much took it, took the caves off the Holdens and they had the caves until 1906 and 1988. The grandson, jimmy Holden.

Speaker 1 11:03

In the 1980s he got a land surveyor to survey the caves, see how much was actually underneath their land and they found it was 80% underneath their land. So they got some lawyers involved, found an old Roman law saying we are in every strength to the heavens above, to the centre of the earth. So there you go, they got the cave. That's the cave back 1988. So Jimmy Holden put the sign of trespassing out by the main entrance. Now it's been moved over there. That's the original sign From 1988. We started running Black. Two brothers came out to Jimmy Holden and started doing some tours for Black War. Two of them were the first tours and the walking tours were stopped until 1988, 2005, when they made this.

Speaker 3 11:50

In addition to the Globuns, our tour also included a look at the rock formations within the cave, and so in this next section, you have a special treat, as my niece, alice, who is travelling with us, gives us a look at stalactites and stalagmites. And no, the difference between them is not just the letter T. Alice, can you tell me the difference between stalactites and stalagmites?

Speaker 1 12:17

So stalagmites might grow up to the ceiling, and stalactites are tight to the ceiling.

Speaker 3 12:25

So if I'm looking at the cave, are the stalactites hanging down in the stalagmites ago. Alright, and when they meet together, what do we call that? A pillar or a coffin?

Speaker 1 12:38

Yeah, curtains, the names for them is where you bake in lasagna sheets, angel wings, elephant ears, it's quite a lot. So how those are formed, if you look up the ceiling is in like an A shape. So I set up a water trickling straight down and it runs along the wall. See, it just spills up over time and these waves at the bottom are formed from the airflow just moving the water a little bit more.

Speaker 3 13:01

How many years would it take for this one to form?

Speaker 1 13:05

This one takes about four to five or five hundred years to keep it centered as it runs along the wall. See, it takes a bit longer than the normal stalactites and stalagmites. Wow, it's beautiful. And how do you guys see the plants? See how the popcorn looking stuff, the real ones run right through the brush that is called Cade Choral or Cade Popcorn. That is from the water being evaporated in air flow. So there are hot tips if you want to cave it. If there's a lot of Cade Popcorn, you can close some entrance or exit.

Speaker 3 13:41

Oh, that's good to know. So if you get lost, look.

Speaker 1 13:44

Got some fossils. There's more scallop shell fossils in the mines and I've got some other ones to show you. This is just a piece of formation. You can touch this one. I'm not going to charge you guys to the $10,000. I promise. See, this is just a broken off one where they found that slip behind us. It looks like a salt land.

Speaker 3 14:10

Translucent right.

Speaker 1 14:13

And over here we have a point of the shower. This is about 30 million years old as well and those holes where you guys can see it. That was a parasite with eight. These two extinct. They don't come to speak anymore. Unfortunately, these are massive, and do you guys know what a mower do? There's a brand new chance. Yes, a big femur. This was the femur bone. These were extinct about 700 to 800 years ago, so they're incredible birds.

Speaker 2 14:57

Yeah. This one would have been about two and a half meters. The biggest ones could be about four and a half meters. Yeah, very huge. Used to hunt us.

Speaker 3 15:10

We saw a skeleton of one in Auckland. It was super tall, probably as tall as from here to up at the top of that cave.

Speaker 2 15:19

It's how they died in the unfortunate it made me believe in dinosaurs too that whole connection between dinosaurs and birds Same with chickens. When you have a kid who's really interested in dinosaurs, we can show them things that are as old as dinosaurs, like that oyster. It's like a whale going in this cave. There's a few in this cave and you can be like that's a dinosaur, that's a dinosaur.

Speaker 3 15:50

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Speaker 3 16:03

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Speaker 1 17:14

So you go first, and my name is Ruben. I've been working for like a week and a half now and I've learned about half an hour way from here.

Speaker 3 17:22

And how did you become fascinated with glow worms and caves?

Speaker 1 17:27

So last year, the first little trip with Nautary Clubs. We came here on this little trip just to venture the cave on a level with the tool Surracing tool, and they asked me. They said you can come in for work experiences and have you get a job. So here you are. Yeah, here I am.

Speaker 2 17:44

All right. Hello, my name's Avi. I've been here for just under three months maybe two months, and I live about two minutes away. And same opportunity. I just came on a small trip and they offered us a make experience. Yeah, that's about it.

Speaker 3 17:58

And who are you and how long have you worked here?

Working in a Cave, Exploring Glowworms

Speaker 4 18:01

So my name is Kaiser J Te Kanua and I've been working here for about two months, two, three months. Yeah, just end up working over here now.

Speaker 3 18:09

And what's the most interesting part about getting to work in a cave every day?

Speaker 4 18:14

A lot of things actually. People and I'm just seeing the cave in general never really gets too old. It's quite lovely.

Speaker 3 18:22

And what do you think of the glowworms?

Speaker 4 18:24

Well, it's mixed Like just looking at them they're cool, but when you actually go deeper into what they actually are, it's a bit, um yeah, Unfetally.

Speaker 3 18:40

It's a little bit of a disgusting, it's not perv you know it's the most fascinating thing about working in the caves. I think it's the most fascinating thing about working in the caves.

Speaker 2 18:55

I think it's not. Everyone gets to see this every day. It's like a real cool office to work in. No one gets to see glowworms every day, so I think it's just something special, something different yeah.

Speaker 3 19:06

I've been traveling the world and I was lucky enough to get to go down into a volcano. In Iceland they have a dormant volcano and it's the only one in the world where you know it's a different one, dad. And it's the only one in the world where it's like a window washing rig and you go down into the, into the cone, yeah. And so I'm always fascinated by sort of caves and experiences that allow people to come a step closer to understanding how the world around us works.

Speaker 1 19:34

And you see, at a strawberry court, you see people with different types of people every single day, so it's always interesting. Well, great, it's the idea for free. You know Exactly, and it also helps with working as a tour guide.

Speaker 2 19:48

You get to deal with other nationalities that really understand, even on this tour. I'll add some of them as a tip. We usually give them something to read, but they don't understand English. So, yeah, I made it work and they really like the tour. But it's just understanding people's circumstances, and so what's cool about it as well is public speaking. So me and Reuben are his students at our school next year, so they're prefix and so this kind of helps with that.

Speaker 3 20:16

Prefix like Harry Potter, I don't really want that, so I wouldn't really know. And what are you guys hoping to do after school?

Speaker 1 20:26

I'm not very sure, so I put them back in me some and probably stay a gap. They travel the world and see what I want to do for this.

Speaker 2 20:35

It's probably about the same as me. Pretty much come back next summer and a bit of a little insight about English, like what I want to do as well. It's about the same as me.

Speaker 3 20:44

And, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?

Speaker 2 20:46

I'm 17 and I'm 16.

Speaker 3 20:49

Well, you guys are doing an amazing job of giving this tour, so thank you. Wait a minute then. What's your favorite old legend to share?

Speaker 4 21:00

Oh, what is my favorite?

Speaker 1 21:04

Oh, two, I'm not actually too sure.

Speaker 4 21:06

I just like I'm telling the stories that I've been told.

Speaker 3 21:10

So tell us one of those stories.

Speaker 4 21:11

All right. So we had one of the electricians working in the ghost passage and they got to a point they happened to look up and there was a dark, shadowy figure just crouched down watching him. So it was, yeah, interesting to hear, and I mean, I've had my fair share of experiences myself, while only one or two, but they were interesting. And, xavier, this was after you got signed off, by the way. It was weird, but yeah.

Speaker 3 21:39

So there are presences in the caves.

Speaker 4 21:43

Well, it's either the guides playing around with other guides, or it could be.

Speaker 2 21:56

This whole cave is solar powered and all the orange lights actually recycle off trucks which are on the road.

Speaker 1 22:03

We're quite a solar efficient cave, which is quite weird to think it's solar powered yeah just trying to leave little impact as early as possible and all the lights are on timer, so once we pass that session they turn off and go back into black and skin.

Speaker 2 22:17

Just as we go like a lamp and floor, it's like a green algae on the wall which we have to come in with the Department of Conservation to spray it so it keeps it natural.

Speaker 1 22:27

Trying to leave little impact as possible. And if the whole family ever wants to leave because we do have a lease with them and it runs on 2035, we can pack this all up leaving. No, okay, and the compilator is in sheets, so, yeah, we can just pick it up from that. This is like my own new fit.

Speaker 2 22:45

So it's not going to damage anything. It's not a mud layer underneath it, that's really cool, so we'll carry on Just watch.

Speaker 3 23:04

You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning podcast with your host, dr Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianeadventurescom. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.