{"id":5977,"date":"2012-06-09T08:33:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T22:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=5977"},"modified":"2012-06-09T08:33:58","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T22:33:58","slug":"moths-hot-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/nature\/moths-hot-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Moths: hot or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Male moths may be throwing themselves into a relationship before they&#8217;re ready.<!--more--><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When a virgin male moth gets a whiff of a female&#8217;s pheromones, he starts shivering to warm up his flight muscles and prepare for take-off. However, some males take off when they&#8217;re still too cool for a powerful flight, according to scientists from the <a href=\"http:\/\/unews.utah.edu\/\">University of Utah<\/a>. This too-cool behaviour could cost them their mate, as moths that take the time to warm up have more flight power.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists watched temperature changes with an infrared camera as the moths started shivering their way up from purple-blue to orange and, in some cases, a warmer red. The moths that smelt the pheromones took off before they were fully warmed up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These guys don&#8217;t all heat up at the same rate,&#8221; Professor Neil Vickers says. &#8220;The guys exposed to the pheromone odour, go &#8216;Wow!&#8217; and they warm up faster and take off more quickly. And that compromises the flight power they can produce.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The moths use a lot of oxygen and energy to make a flight, so this shouldn&#8217;t be a decision that they undertake without consideration. &#8220;It&#8217;s costly to fly, to jump into a relationship,&#8221; Vickers says.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/emb_releases\/2012-06\/uou-vmm053012.php\">Eureka Alert<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Male moths may be throwing themselves into a relationship before they&#8217;re ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,116,6,10],"tags":[844,166,74,205],"class_list":["post-5977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals","category-insects","category-nature","category-video","tag-animals","tag-insects-2","tag-science-2","tag-video-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5977"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6042,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977\/revisions\/6042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}