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From: ajpierce@ulah.med.unc.edu (Andrew Pierce)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: moth flutter
Summary: It isn't random (I think)
Message-ID: <2879@beguine.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 91 22:49:18 GMT
References: <1991Mar5.195259.20804@xn.ll.mit.edu>
Sender: usenet@beguine.UUCP
Reply-To: ajpierce@uncmed.med.unc.edu (Andrew Pierce)
Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
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In article <1991Mar5.195259.20804@xn.ll.mit.edu> rp@juno.ll.mit.edu (Richard Pavelle) writes:
>I have been struck by the random flight (fluttering) of moths
>and butterflies. An explanation could be that the behavior would 
>help avoid capture. But the flight may appear more random than
>it is. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

I heard a long time ago, that the movement of moths overall is not random.
I don't know how one would correlate overall directional motion with
short-scale random motion, but it would be an interesting thing to
address.  That the overall movement is directional can be shown by the way
moths are attracted to lights at night.  Supposedly the reason for this is
that the moths have some sort of guidance system which relies upon
parallel rays of light.  With sunlight or even moonlight, this is a pretty
good approximation since the lights are relatively far away.  With an
artificial light though, the light rays are NOT parallel.  The moths
however don't realize this and as a result spiral in towards the light
source.  Does anyone have any information on this being true or not, or
are moths just attracted to bright lights for some reason?
     -Andy