Facts in «Shine Back»
The film is a fable; two narration lines lean on real firefly behaviour. No numbers appear in the film.
| Line in the film | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|
| "On summer nights, a firefly's blink is a question." | U.S. National Park Service, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Synchronous Fireflies: https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm — flashing serves "attracting a mate"; the light patterns "help male and female fireflies of the same species identify one another". General background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly (light and courtship). | "Question" and "answer" are a poetic reading of courtship flashing, not a scientific description. |
| "When one answers, thousands blink back, all at once." | Same NPS page: Photinus carolinus "is known as one of few species with the incredible ability to synchronize their flashing patterns"; one theory is that males "flash in unison to elicit a call-and-response interaction from the females". | The page notes that the behaviour "is not yet fully understood". The film's "thousands answering together" is a dramatisation of synchronous flashing. |
Everything else (the girl, the deer, the giant deer, the constellation) is invented.