Why at night do bugs fly around light poles?
This is an astronomy question, believe it or not. Moths navigate by the moon. For millions of years there were no artificial lights to confuse them. Now there are millions of moons to confuse them. They do not actually head for the light. The problem is that when navigating by the moon, the moon does not change location as moths fly, because of its distance. But with artificial light, as they navigate by it, the light being relatively close, it keeps changing its relative location. The moth would not expect to pass by the moon. To compensate, the moth changes direction, and in order to keep the artificial moon where it would expect it, the moth has to spiral into the light. You will note that moths do not head straight for a light, but spiral into it. So, it is not correct to say moths are attracted to light. They try to use it to navigate, but get utterley confused.
