Flying insects’ mysterious attraction to flames and artificial lights has intrigued scientists and the public for centuries. The age-old phrase “drawn like a moth to a flame” captures moths’ perplexing tendency to circle lights at night. But it’s not just moths — flies, wasps and other insects also spiral around lamps and crash into lit surfaces after dark. Now, new research reveals the mechanism behind this phenomenon. Scientists tracked insects’ movements in 3D around lights using motion-capture cameras and stereo videography. They found that rather than steering straight toward lights, insects tilt their backs toward the light source. This reflex gone awry traps them in looping, circular flights. “What we kept finding is that insects, such as dragonflies, moths, butterflies and other night-flying insects as well, were tilting their backs, which we call the dorsal axis, their dorsum, towards the light,” lead researcher Samuel Fabian, an entomologist at Imperial College London, said in an interview for Nature. This “dorsal light response” helps insects orient themselves in 3D space. “It’s quite strange for us to think about this, because as animals that spend most of our time on the ground, it’s quite obvious which way gravity is. But actually, if you’re flying you’re pulling all kinds of g-forces, and those g-forces, those accelerations as you’re moving around can kind of mask exactly where true gravity is,” Fabian said. Before artificial lights, gazing skyward was a handy gauge of which way was up. As such, insects tilt their backs toward the brightest…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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