First Age Problems

[oloriel]

That moment when you mean to use the "like a moth drawn to the candle" imagery in an Age-of-the-Trees fanfic set in Valinor and realise it doesn't work. Moths die in candles because they mistake our artificial lights for bright lights in the sky, particularly the moon. BUT IN THIS SETTING, THE MOON DOES NOT YET EXIST. Instead, we have two very

Comments

[elenbarathi]

Moths are certainly not the only organisms to display phototropism - lots of insects do, and many plants. There are day-flying moths, and night-flying butterflies. Some of the butterflies are dull-colored; some of the moths are showy, such as the Luna moth.
"In the presence of two sources of light, [the phototropic organism] orients itself toward neither the one nor the other, but in an intermediate direction, so that the two sides of its body receive the same light."

I like cowboy_r's suggestion, that the phototropic organisms of Valinor in the First Age naturally moved back and forth between Laurelin and Telperion. There might also be differences in the frequencies of light to which they reacted - some more drawn to the blue frequencies, some more drawn to the yellow.

Obviously, if there are insects, there must also be insect predators - birds, bats, spiders, frogs, other insects - to keep them in balance. Camouflage evolves because those who are hard for predators to see are more likely to live to pass on their genes. Thus, even with no particular darkness in Valinor, moths would still tend to match the tree-bark where they like to rest, because if they were bright-colored, the birds would just pick them off like Skittles.

The Elves of Valinor wouldn't have needed that many candles before the Darkening, but no doubt they did have cellars and other underground or inner rooms where they'd need artificial light, and perhaps that's where the attraction of flying bugs to light was first noted.

Alarming to think that when the Trees went out, every torch and rush-light the Elves lit was swarmed by confused insects that had never before known total darkness.

[oloriel]

And at that point, the whole thing crumbles anyway, because at some point it gets too hard to reconcile evolution with "Yavanna made them all up". I mean, it's a chain-reaction really, once you start wondering about moths, you start thinking about spiders...

Alarming to think that when the Trees went out, every torch and rush-light the Elves lit was swarmed by confused insects that had never before known total darkness.

That's a really rather powerful and disturbing image that I'm definitely going to keep in mind if I ever choose to write something set during/immediately after the Darkening!

[elenbarathi]

I know - it's like that old story about the eminent biologist who was asked what a lifetime of studying the Creation had led him to deduce about the nature of the Creator, and who answered "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles."

We can't do without the beetles, or the ants, or the wasps, or the spiders, or the termites. We can't do without the things they eat, and the things that eat them. The arthropod and annelid species are essential to a working ecosystem - therefore Yavanna must have crafted them all, and set them each to their work.

Maybe the Trees were the first-ever flowering plants, and all insect phototropism exists due to their need for cross-pollination.

Camping back East in my youth, especially in early Summer, it was always horrifying the way any light drew swarms of moths, mosquitoes, flying beetles, giant crane-flies, and weird insectoid things that one never suspected were out there. They're more attracted to blue light than to yellow; fluorescent or Coleman lantern light brings them much thicker than firelight.

No doubt they would have been attracted most of all to the Silmarils, if they could see them. Now I have an image of Morgoth's crowned head surrounded by a halo of bizarre flying bugs, with giant bats swooping in and out of the swarm as they feed.