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Weekend


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November 15, 2002

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. Night-fishing reader recounts, "My son and I noticed the riverside bugs would fly right into our hot lantern and burn up. Why? We were left wondering, waiting for fish bites."

    A. Attraction to light is natural and generally adaptive, answers University of California-Davis entomologist Hugh Dingle. Whether flying by day or night, insects are drawn to the bright sky which orients them "up"; later they may be repelled by light or attracted to specific wavelengths from plants, which sends them back "down." At night the lantern overrides the sky as the brightest source, so the insects fly toward it mistakenly, with the disastrous consequences noted.


     
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