Are insects drawn to light? New research shows it’s confusion, not fatal attraction
WASHINGTON — Like a moth to flame, many scientists and poets have long assumed that flying insects were simply, inexorably drawn to bright lights. Rather than being attracted to light, researchers believe that artificial lights at night may actually scramble flying insects’ innate navigational systems, causing them to flutter in confusion around porch lamps, street lights and other artificial beacons. “They’re accustomed to using light as a cue to know which way is up.” Insects do not fly directly toward a light source, but actually “tilt their backs toward the light,” said Sam Fabian, an Imperial College London entomologist and co-author of the study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. They also documented that some insects will flip upside down — and often crash land — in the presence of lights that shine straight upward like search lights. “For millions of years, insects oriented themselves by sensing that the sky is light, the ground is dark” — until people invented artificial lights, said Avalon Owens, a Harvard entomologist who was not involved in the research.
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