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An Asian-Australian moth becomes more sexually active under red light than under another colour of light or in the dark.
Dim red light appears to stimulate chemical changes in the antennae of male yellow peach moths (
Conogethes punctiferalis), making them more sensitive to the smells emitted by nearby females. This increases their copulation rates, says Wei Xiao at Southwest University in Chongqing, China.
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Xiao and his colleagues made the accidental discovery while studying the general behaviour of the moths, which invade orchards and spice farms across Asia and Australia.
To mimic natural light conditions in their laboratory, the scientists kept the lights on for 15 hours and turned them off for 9 hours per day. When they needed to work with the moths during the hours of darkness, they turned on red lights because scientists generally assume that insects can’t see red and react negligibly to it, says Xiao.
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Scientists in Israel, in a serendipitous discovery while studying the causes of skin colour changes in the cephalopod due to light, have made a shocking discovery. They found that octopus arms can sense a beam of light and evade it even when its eyes cannot see the light.
In a series of tests and investigation, the scientists discovered that shining a light on an octopus s arm caused the animal to repudiate it, even when it was slumbering, and while the source of the light was present on the other side of a small opening into which its arms could fit but the light was unseen to its eyes.