These Moths Smell Flowers Through Their Wings, Study Finds
Research has shown that, despite limited neural capabilities, insects depend on olfactory cues to locate food, find mates, and avoid predators. For the latest work, the researchers investigated a previously unexplored function of sensory hairs on the moth’s wings. What they found was that those hairs actively contributed to the moth’s “sense” of smell, not just a simple exchange of chemicals.
- ▪Research has shown that, despite limited neural capabilities, insects depend on olfactory cues to locate food, find mates, and avoid predators.
- ▪For the latest work, the researchers investigated a previously unexplored function of sensory hairs on the moth’s wings.
- ▪What they found was that those hairs actively contributed to the moth’s “sense” of smell, not just a simple exchange of chemicals.
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Record
| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/these-moths-smell-through-their-wings-study-finds-2000791478 |
| Publication time | Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:05:40 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-27T21:38:08.425Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-27T21:38:08.425Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | Az_S9tCEPAg8 · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Smell is a complicated thing for insects. Research has shown that, despite limited neural capabilities, insects depend on olfactory cues to locate food, find mates, and avoid predators. Typically, this is done through their antennae, but not always.cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({"playerId":"92b7b46b-43ed-4e0e-b21b-2c999302d9d7","settings":{"advertising":{"macros":{"AD_UNIT":"/23178111854/od.gizmodo.com/article","CHILD_UNIT":"article","POST_ID":"2000791478","POST_TYPE":"post","CHANNEL":"science","SECTION":"biology","SUBSECTION":"","CATEGORIES":"biology","TAGS":"biology,entomology","NOP":"0"},"timeBeforeFirstAd":0}}}).render("cnx-player-main")}); For the tobacco hawkmoth, its sense of smell is found in their wings, according to a study published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Gizmodo.
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