Around us, the traces of insects can be said to be everywhere, even in the cold winter waxing moon, occasionally see some small insects dangling in front of our eyes, not to mention in the spring and summer, the world is full of their busy figures.
Huge family of insects
The most abundant organisms on earth are insects, there are currently more than 1 million known species of insects, accounting for more than 80% of the animal kingdom, due to the characteristics of the largest number of species, the largest number, and the most widely distributed, and are known as the "three most" animals. Many of them are used by us humans to benefit society, and of course, some insects can also bring disasters to humans. It is precisely because the natural ecosystem with the participation of insects is closely related to human life, so the knowledge of the insect world and its understanding also promote the harmony between us humans and the natural world.
Insects are not only very diverse, but also quite amazing in number, and sometimes it may reach hundreds of thousands of them in a small piece of farmland, and we only need to add a little imagination, the nest of ants running around in the wild grass, the number of unknown insects on the crop poles, the image of this huge family in our minds can be imagined.
With so many insects, their relationship with each other is not disorganized and clueless, and entomologists have studied their various relatives with each other and classified them.
Classification of insects (from Shanghai Entomological Museum)
At present, all kinds of insects under the insect class in animal taxonomy can be divided into 34 orders, the first order is Coleoptera, and all beetles belong to the Order Coleoptera, with more than 300,000 species, accounting for 40% of the total number of insects. The second largest order is Lepidoptera, which is known to have about 140,000 species, and moths and butterflies belong to lepidoptera, of which moths account for more than 90% and butterflies account for less than 10%. There are also seven orders closely related to production: orthoptera represented by locusts and crickets, Taemonae represented by thrips, homoptera represented by cicadas and aphids, hemiptera represented by bugs, veined wings represented by grasshoppers, ants and bees belong to hymenoptera, mosquitoes and flies belong to diptera, under the order is a family, and the lower part of the family is divided into several different genera, and the genus is what we usually call different species, for example: the pink butterfly we are most familiar with belongs to lepidoptera, the pink butterfly family, Species under the genus Pink Butterfly. The seven-star ladybird belongs to the coleoptera, ladybird family, and species of the genus Ladybird.
Why do they tend to be light?
So many insects have undergone long-term evolution, and each of them has undergone great differences in all aspects, but some of these varieties still maintain some ancient habits, especially the phototropism of some insects, which has continued to this day.
Under the lights of summer nights, countless lamp moths, as well as some other winged insects, can often be seen from a distance, flying continuously, dancing around the lights, if we forcibly disperse or eliminate, there are still countless insects coming forward and back, continuing to come from all directions, with the courage to go to the soup fire. If we light a torch, what we see is the spectacular scene of "lamp moths fighting fires".
This characteristic of insects is called phototropism, different types of insects are different, for example, many lamp moths especially like strong lights, but the adults of red bellworms prefer weak light sources, they rarely fly to bright electric and gas lamps, but they are stubbornly rushing to those black lights. Different colors of light, the attraction of different insects is also different, red light for all insects, is basically invisible, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue, purple and ultraviolet light for insects like, especially ultraviolet light waves, a variety of pests in the farmland has a special temptation, this is our use of ultraviolet light today, trap and kill the scientific principle of these harmful insects in the farmland.
After long-term observation and experimental research, scientists have learned something about the mystery of "insect phototropism". It is believed that these life such as lamp moths, which were born in ancient times, have experienced the dark nights of the barbaric period on the earth, forming a light-oriented instinct: when flying at night, they often use moonlight or other starlight to determine their flight direction, always making the moon (star) light shine from one direction into their eyes. When avoiding the pursuit of predators such as bats, or turning a corner around an obstacle, as long as you turn another bend, the moonlight will still shoot in the original direction, so you find your way back. This behavior is biologically known as the "astronomical navigation" of animals.
When the lamp moth flies at night, because it uses the distant moon (star) light to navigate, in its eyes, those moon (star) rays that hit the ground can be seen as beams of parallel rays. When humans master the fire, the night lights for insects, because it is much closer than the moon and starlight, naturally become the reference object for the lamp moth when flying at night, because the distance between these fires and the lamp moth is not large, it is no longer a beam of parallel light, but a radiating divergent light, thus laying the crisis of the lamp moth's life.
Flying lamp moths, as long as they see these fires from a distance, are mistakenly believed to be "moonlight or other starlight". Therefore, when it uses this false "moon (star) light" to determine its flight direction, the moth can fly in a certain direction as long as it maintains its fixed direction with the moon (starlight). However, because the divergent light of the lamp is too close to the moth, the two inadvertently form an angle, and the moth's instinct still keeps itself in the same fixed direction as the light source as before, so it has to circle around the fire until it finally extinguishes the fire and dies.
The trajectory of the lamp moth to put out the fire (taken from the Shanghai Entomological Museum)
It can be said that when the lamp moth flies around the light at a certain angle according to its ancient habits, it naturally flies out of the spiral-like route and finally rushes into the flame or lamp center, looking like a fire. In fact, the subjective desire of the moth is not necessary to die in this raging flame, because of the spiral angle formed by its flight path, the result can only fly around this flame, gradually approaching, until finally it becomes a firefighting action.
"Lamp moths fighting fire", a mystery that has made people feel mysterious since ancient times, in today's science, although it has been basically solved by us humans. But whether you mock the folly of the moth for finding its own way to die, or praise the moth's courage to yearn for the light. One thing is certain, these lamp moths are not self-destructive.
The mistake they make is to think of the light as something vital to its survival, or reproduction. It is our human progress today that consciously or unconsciously manipulates the instincts that the lamp moths originally relied on to survive in the evolutionary process, and eventually caused the lamp moths to cause self-destruction tragedies.