i was reading recently about some high speed camera footage that some research group collected and studied and their conclusion is that moths aren’t attracted to lights. rather, they have a dorsal light sensor that normally picks up light from the moon and stars. that sensor gets used to align their flight trajectory. when they fly past a street lamp, they end up caught circling around the light because their tiny moth brains are convinced that the light source is up and they’re constantly realigning their flight path to match.