7 Simple Questions That Scientists Still Can't Answer

3. Why Do Moths Love Lights?

"Like a moth to a flame" is a phrase we all know, but why are moths drawn to artificial lights so much anyway? You would think that an instinct to dive-bomb a naked flame would be pretty swiftly removed from the gene pool by good old evolution, seeing as its pretty difficult to pass on your genes as a singed pile of moth-dust. However, the behaviour persists. It was thought for a while that moths use the light of the moon to navigate, and the artificial lights caused this internal GPS to go a bit haywire. However, this theory has a couple of glaring holes in it, the first of which being that moths probably don't use the moon to navigate. About 50% of moth species don't even migrate, so they wouldn't really need to. Another problem is that man invented fire over 400,000 years ago. In that time we've managed to evolve blue eyes and malarial resistance, so you'd think that moths would have evolved a "non-suicidal dive bomb" gene by now. It has also been put forwards that moths might be attracted to infrared light because it looks a bit like the pheromones given off by females. So, basically, to a moth, candles look like a sexy lady moths. Not buying it. Especially given than moths are actually more attracted to UV light, not infrared. We just don't know. Maybe moths really are just really, really sad and always want to end it all.