When people think of bugs they generally think of gross pests that need to be kept at a distance. The farther away, the better. But insects, especially flying ones, have a strange, gross beauty to ...

To find out why insects gather around artificial lights, researchers filmed insects with a high-speed camera and used motion capture in an enclosure to trace their precise movements. Artificial light, ...

Flying insects are known to make a beeline for lights in the dark, as the saying goes, "like moths to a flame." Now, scientists have figured out why insects are so keen on light, but it's not because ...

Flying insects use compensatory head movements to stabilize gaze. Like other optokinetic responses, these movements can reduce image displacement, motion and misalignment, and simplify the optic flow ...

Turn on a light outside at night, and it won't be long before a bevy of insects start careening wildly around it, apparently drawn in "like a moth to a flame," as the saying goes. Now, in a series of ...

The insects flying in circles around your porch light aren’t captivated by the light. Instead, they may have lost track of which way is up, high-speed infrared camera data suggest. Moths and other ...

Tiny microrobots are learning to fly with insect-like speed and control, thanks to new AI-driven technology developed at MIT.

It’s an observation as old as humans gathering around campfires: Light at night can draw an erratically circling crowd of insects. In art, music and literature, this spectacle is an enduring metaphor ...