I became intrigued by the glow worm when I initially created this glow worm cartoon (boy, the drawings have improved since then, haven’t they?) early on in my website. It was then that I discovered that the glow worm was part of a four stage cycle (egg, glow worm, pupa and gnat/fly). The last stage purely involves reproduction and hence no time to eat, so no need for a mouth I guess.
I wanted to create a cartoon with three animals deprived of hearing, seeing and speaking. The former two were easy to come up with suitable candidates, but the latter was a tad more difficult. I mean, is it possible to be born without a mouth? Well, yes it is, if you are the gnat of the glow-worm. The humble glow-worm starts its life as an egg (3 weeks), it then becomes a larvae (9 months – as the glow-worm), followed by a pupa (2 weeks), to finally emerge as a gnat. And the gnat doesn’t have a mouth! This probably explains why it only lives long enough to lay eggs and that’s it (about 3 days).