We Were Completely Wrong About Why Bugs Are Attracted To Lights

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about a new study that explains why bugs are attracted to light...and it's a bit depressing
Links:
#insects #biology #bugs

0:00 Bugs attracted to light
1:30 Previous assumptions that were not correct
2:50 New research and how it was done
3:35 Discoveries and unusual findings
5:20 How this affects insects' instincts
6:55 Which lights are the worst?
8:00 Conclusions
9:20 Variations amongst insects

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[flobba]

Now can scientists figure out why bugs wanna fly into my nose.

[derkevevin]

This just makes "Drawn like a moth to a flame" more sinister. Like someone not only being ignorant to the danger, but also to the fact that they got totally lost, let alone that they're diverting from their straight path at all. Their whole world is literally being turned upside down, without them noticing a thing.

[ksptm]

As a lighting designer and engineer for one of the largest commercial lighting companies in Europe, this is a great informative video. The white paper this study generated is now being used by various lighting manufacturers to consider when designing new lights for external applications. Great work Antov, always top quality videos.

[KrasBadan]

Imagine, you're walking to your home after a long day, when suddenly you pass an alien radio beacon thingy. You don't know what it is though, as far as you're aware it's just a pillar far away holding the sky.

The spacetime around it wraps in a weird way, but you don't notice a thing, you simply can't comprehend it. You're thinking that you're about to get to your home, it's just 15 minutes away, you only need to go in the direction about 30° to the right of the pillar and you're done.

But after half an hour of walking you realise that you can still see it, and it still has that 30° angle compared to the direction of your house. The only difference is that it appears to be maybe 5% closer.

When one hour passes you're still in the same location, the pillar is again a bit closer. You're thinking: it's weird that I still haven't gotten to home, can't really figure out why, maybe I'm going in the wrong direction?

You change the direction. 25 minutes and you're back. You're panicking. You run directly away from it, the ground below you moves but the thing doesn't get further, in fact it approaches you slowly. You stop after 15 minutes, noticing that the surroundings started to repeat, and also that it again appears to be 30° to the left of the way you're looking at.

The only thing you haven't tried yet is going directly into it. You wanted to avoid doing this but now you're desperate. It's not so bad though, because in just 5 minutes you're back where you started. It seems that the closer you get the stronger its effect is. Also you notice that it's getting warmer.

You can't think straight, now you walk in a random direction, it's not like there is more than 1 direction you can go though. The pillar being real close it now just takes about 30 seconds to return to the old location. The temperature is that of a hot summer day.

At some point you realise that now you can't walk at all. Every new step ends up where it started, but despite it the pillar gets closer.

And although you can't walk, you can't stand still either, because every time you stop you feel like something bumps into you from behind.

When you try to look away you return to that familiar angle moments later. But for half a second, you can see that behind you there are people lying on the ground, some of them have severe burns. It'll hapoen to you too, because you're already starting to faint, you can't endure that hot sauna temperature for much longer.

Afterwards aliens make a paper about why humans seem to be attracted to their beacons.

[spudmanii]

Wow this is some real cosmic horror stuff. They're literally getting trapped in some strange device made by beings far beyond their comprehension. When trapped in it, it's like that classic horror trope of going into a fog, or down a hallway, or through a doorway only to end up right back where you were with no comprehension of how long it's been

[supergeek]

That's the same reason that silver colored/aluminized plastic mulch is so effective in keeping insects from attacking plants. The extreme brightness on their down direction causes them to turn to an upside down orientation, which prevents them from being able to land on the plants, and thus from being able to feed on them. No pesticides required.

[PastaAivo]

The fact that bugs orient their backs to light is so simple, yet explains so much. Using light for orientation and navigation is a given, but getting stuck because that light is actually located somewhere near and not in the sky, constantly forcing the bugs to change their course is pretty wild.

Almost like swimming/diving in a turning drum, trying to figure out where's the surface...

[hunterswepic]

As a pilot, I found this to be super interesting. It seems like a very similar experience to spatial disorientation when encountering IMC. Very cool!

[glassworktrophic]

I'm all for reducing light pollution. That most people go through life never seeing the full majesty of the milky way above our heads depresses me even more than this.

[TheGreatMoonFrog]

Bugs: "The light will bring doom to our entire species!"

Spiders: "It is the promise land!"

[patrickoberholzer]

30 seconds in and he's already got the Roman empire on his mind.

[orionbarnes]

Wait, it's just dorsal light response? I'm so angry now that I didn't realize something so obvious. They just view lights as "up" and get stuck travelling in a circle because the light is too small. Wow, that was frustratingly obvious

[alessandrobarbato]

One time I went to a vacation in a lake city, and noticed that the locals especially at bar or restaurants all used red led lights for the outdoor use, and that near theese red lamps there were no insect while normal white lights were like nests full of insects. For what I've seen the color of the lights matters.

[jeil]

I had always noticed when camping or fishing that for a short time before and just after dusk is when a lot of bugs become active and get attracted to lights. By waiting till an hour after dusk, before turning a light on, you will greatly reduce the number of bugs circling a light. If a light has been on for a while and there is a large population of bugs around it, turn it off for half an hour before reigniting it and it will keep the number of bugs down. Most of the action occurs just around dusk.

[jacobvlogz]

“Why are you flying in circles?” “I HAVE NO IDEA HELP ME PLEASE”

[meino]

Huh... thats pretty interesting, since this explanation is very similar to what I've always been told. The difference being that the explanation I was given phrased it more like "they try to keep the sun/moon above them in a stationary spot to fly straight, so when they encounter a lamp they mistake it for the sun/moon and get confused" instead of the more complex way this instinct operates.

Since it is so similar to this new explanation, I wonder where it came from?

[frequentfrenzied]

Insects also seem to be attracted to radio sources. I've worked with 2.4Ghz radios that are commonly used for wifi applications, and I find that if they are mounted outdoors then they often get swarmed by clouds of insects much like a light bulb would. It seems like they are affected by a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum than just visible light.

[vallorahn]

As a lighting designer, I suggest lights with glare shields and honeycomb filters for narrow beam up lights, like flag pole luminaries. That will help insects snapping out of it by cutting the unnecessary glare portion, which can be even over 70% of the beam.

[Pyrozoid]

I remember reading this in a Richard Dawkins book about how insects use the sun and moon to reorient themselves. The mechanism by which they do it has evolved with the fact that both of those light sources produce, practically, plane wave-fronts of light because they are practically at infinity. But then we humans introduced artificial light which creates spherical or cylindrical wave-fronts and hence mess with their reorientation mechanisms.

[davidk]

Korea just reported a shortage of pollinating insects this year, and had to have groups of volunteers hand-pollinate large orchards to maintain fruit production. With the honey bee population already dropping dangerously low, it’s a serious issue for humanity that can’t be ignored anymore. Policies need to be made urgently to undo the damage from the rapidly increasing installation of extremely bright night-lighting in rural areas.