When the lights are turned off, the worms turn on Credit: Karora/Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
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If you're inside New Zealand Waitomo Caves and look up, you might think you are seeing twinkling blue stars. But in this new Deep Look film by KQED you will discover that the ceiling is really covered with glowing worms—and these carnivores are hungry. Moths and other insects are attracted to the lights and get caught in the worms' sticky hanging webs. The glow worms reel in the captured insects and eat them alive.
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Eliene Augenbraun is a multimedia science producer, formerly Nature Research's Multimedia Managing Editor and Scientific American's senior video producer. Before that, she founded and ran ScienCentral, an award-winning news service providing ABC and NBC with science news stories. She has a PhD in Biology. Follow Eliene Augenbraun on Twitter