Why do moths only come out at night when they like the light so much?
They don’t like the light – they like flying and using the moon to navigate by. You know if you’re driving along and it’s late in the afternoon. You could use the direction of the sun to figure out which direction you were going in because it’s so far away it seems to be the same angle even if you drive a few miles, in any given direction – whereas a signpost as you go past it changes the direction it’s in relative to yours a lot. Unfortunately moths didn’t evolve to take in to consideration artificial light, trying to keep a light bulb at a single position relative to the moth doesn’t mean they fly in a straight line like when they use the moon, instead it’s too close and describes a circle. This is why moths are ‘drawn’ to flame. They tend to go out at night to avoid birds, though bats feed on them, and there are a variety of adaptations between bat and moth as they each adapt to the other.
