Scientists have discovered that insects aren’t attracted to light – they just get dizzy

The scientists emphasised that the problem is that when flying near artificial lights, the sky is no longer the brightest point, so the insects instinctively reorient themselves to fly around the bulbs. They end up constantly changing their orientation (to be with their backs to the light) and this causes them to become dizzy, the bugs start banging against the light source and subsequently die either directly due to the collision, the heat of the bulb, or exhaustion.

To find out, the researchers obtained 477 videos of 10 different insect species interacting with the artificial light. Indeed, all species tried to fly in such a way that their backs were to the light – including flipping upside down when flying over the light source.