Insects don't swarm at LED lights
- ID
- 43514
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 05 Nov 2026, 3:50 AM
- Fetched
- 06 Nov 2026, 3:17 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.birdsoutsidemywindow.org/2026/11/03/insects-dont-swarm-at-led-lights/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 1.5
- Created
- 06 Nov 2026, 3:18 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
Kate St. John's November 3, 2026 post on the Outside My Window nature blog argues that insects swarm incandescent lights but not LEDs because incandescent bulbs emit UV and LEDs don't — and then opens with a correction banner saying commenters pointed out she has the incandescent/LED UV issue backwards, so the piece is 'about to change a lot.' The post leans on a secondhand anecdote from Veracruz guide Roland Rumm, whose family's geckos stopped visiting an outdoor dining area after it switched to LED, plus a 2024 BBC explainer on insects navigating by moonlight and a 2016 University of Bristol field experiment comparing incandescent, compact fluorescent, cool-white LED and warm-white LED. It drew 301 points and 154 comments on Hacker News.
Why it matters
There is no action here for developers, founders, or AI/ML learners — this is a nature blog post, and the author has already flagged its central claim as likely wrong. The one concrete lesson is about link hygiene: a 301-point HN thread promoted a post whose own top banner says don't rely on it yet, so treat thread popularity as a signal to read the source, not as evidence the claim is true.
Discussion angle
Use it as a 2-minute cautionary example: a highly upvoted thread pointing at a post the author herself marked as probably backwards — worth asking how often our own shared links get read past the headline.