Tag: bug pokemon

scientificpokedex:

Moths are always seen flocking towards light bulbs or street lamps, flying around in circles until they start looking more confused than creepy. Dustox is no exception, but why is it attracted to light?

Dustox is nocturnal, meaning it sleeps during the day and comes out at night. Being attracted to light is called being positively photoactic. A negatively photoactic animal would run away from light, like Gengar or Sableye. 

As to why Dustox are positively photoactic, there’s a few reasons. The most common explanation being that Dustox uses transverse orientation to navigate. Dustox doesn’t have a GPS, a map, or even a compass, so the only way for it to tell where it is going it based on solid, easy to find sources in the night sky–namely, the moon. Dustox evolved before there were cities or streetlights, and flew by the light of the moon to know which direction it was going.

Then, when it sees a streetlight, it will automatically assume that the light is the moon. If it flies past it, suddenly the angle to the light will change, causing Dustox to become disoriented. Because the moon is so far away, the angle will not change. It will as the moon moves across the sky, of course, but that happens too slowly for a moth to tell. If it flies straight past a near streetlight, suddenly the light is behind Dustox instead of on the left–causing Dustox to think that it has accidentally turned right.

Naturally, Dustox gets confused because it didn’t think it would arrive at “the moon” so soon (or, at all). But once its there, it stays for a number of reasons.

First, light might act as an escape route for moths. If they’re sitting in a bush and a predator comes along, they will all fly upwards–towards the sky’s light. Or if its trapped inside a box, it will fly to the hole in the cardboard, another escape route. So the disoriented Dustox might feel scared and try to escape, by flying closer towards the light.

Next, moths’ eyes have sensitive light sensors just like ours do. If you’ve been to the eye doctor and had your eyes dilated, you know how Dustox might feel. The sides of their compound eyes (called ommatidium) adjust to the amount of light around them, enabling them to see better in the dark, or the bright, and etc. Our eyes do this fairly quickly, but Dustox’s eyes are slow to adjust. When you look at the sun, you are blinded for only a second after, but when Dustox looks at a bright light bulb, it’s blinded for much longer, therefore making it unsafe to return to the dark, causing Dustox to stick by the light longer.

Or, they might think the bright light is the sun, signaling them that its time to go to sleep.

Dustox naturally uses the moon to navigate, and gets confused and disoriented around bright lights. It sticks around the lights because its eyes can’t easily readjust to the dark, or because it thinks the light is an escape route.

Dustox must be very sensitive to orientation in order to be attracted to cities: While a distant city certainly gives off plenty of light, the angle would only change a tiny amount as Dustox flies around.