Mysterious Cave Creatures: Investigating Rods on Film

[Altune]

Does anyone have any information on the creatures if any that are captured on film in large caves in south america and other places? I think they are called rods or something. They look like large centapeeds that fly thru the air very fast. Just courious if this is just camera speed settings causing say a small bird to appear several frames elongating its body to look like the so called "rod" creature.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think this has been pretty well explained as insects very near the camera, or insects moving very quickly. The last that I heard, the definitive, irrefutable explanation will come when someone obtains film and video of the same alleged "rods".

We had a couple of thread a long time ago but nothing popped up. A google should turn up lots of hits.

Here is one explanation found. It sounds pretty good to me:

They ARE insects--perfectly ordinary insects. As you correctly observe, they are a videographic artifact based on the frame capture rate of the videocam versus the wingbeat frequency of the insects. [continued]

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrodhoax.html

 

[Overdose]

I remember seeing an article about this, a nature photographer had captured a group of 'rods' in all the possible states of flight...so you could see some of them hovering, with a couple going into a semi-rod like blur, and then with a few in full flight exhibiting the classic rod 'effect' All in the same picture.
At the time it was the smoking gun which debunked the whole thing, and the picture appeared in several fortean type magazines.

 

[matthyaouw]

I once watched a program about rods. You know one of those ones that insists blindly that everything has to be aliens or a conspricy, or better yet a conspiricy about aliens. Was quite funny to watch really.

Thanks for clearing up the cause of the 'phenomenon' for me, 'cause wouldn't you know it, the program offered no explanation beyond "aliens! rejoice, for we have PROOF!"

 

[Altune]

Yep I thought so. There was a " sightings" or something like that on the subject. I thought it looked kind of sceptical.

 

[Altune]

Yep I thought so. There was a " sightings" or something like that on the subject. I thought it looked kind of sceptical.