The Animal Kindom

Theme

Light as an environmental factor has an impact on all living creatures. That much we know.

Light influ­ences both human and animal emo­tions and behav­iour – includ­ing those of insects and gen­er­ally noc­tur­nal crea­tures such as bats, owls and migra­tory birds. As well as the shift from day­light to dark­ness, moon­light and starlight also play an impor­tant part.

Bats, for exam­ple, hunt only at night using echolo­ca­tion. Migra­tory birds nav­i­gate their pas­sage using the stars in the sky. On the water, insects hatch their larvae at night. They are all depen­dent on dark­ness. Dark­ness pro­tects them from heat and hunters, allows them to search for food in safety, pro­vides ori­en­ta­tion, and con­trols bio­log­i­cal cycles – includ­ing repro­duc­tive cycles as we see with the fire­fly. Female fire­flies emit their gentle light signal to the males. If the sur­round­ings are too bright, the males miss the signal and mating fails. Light­ing along water­ways attracts insects in their droves but this is out of bal­ance with nature, and so they are not avail­able as food for fish, birds and bats.

Arti­fi­cial light­ing affects the behav­iour of our animal king­dom. We are learn­ing more every day about the true impacts of exte­rior light­ing, and adapt­ing our behav­iour accord­ingly. Bats, for exam­ple, are pro­tected by a raft of bind­ing inter­na­tional and Euro­pean agree­ments (e.g. the Fauna Flora Habi­tat Direc­tive) which also iden­ti­fies light as a rel­e­vant factor.

Against this back­ground, sus­tain­able exte­rior light­ing in urban or rural areas must take into account the needs of insects and other ani­mals:

Light that looks out for insects
A main focus of Selux is the devel­op­ment of Night Sky tech­nolo­gies. LED tech­nol­ogy plus new mate­ri­als and pro­duc­tion processes today give us con­sid­er­ably greater oppor­tu­nity to con­trol the direc­tion, light dis­tri­b­u­tion, dura­tion, inten­sity and spec­trum of lumi­naires.


Tar­geted light with a clear cut-off
Spe­cially devel­oped optics with a pre­cise down­ward beam enable an even more tar­geted focus. This means that no direct light com­po­nents are radi­ated above the hor­i­zon­tal plane of a lumi­naire. And the star-stud­ded inky black night sky so cru­cial to people, ani­mals and plants is main­tained.


Warm colour tem­per­a­tures
The com­po­si­tion of light is a deter­min­ing factor as we jour­ney towards sus­tain­able light­ing. Living organ­isms react highly sen­si­tively to spec­tral com­po­si­tions of elec­tro­mag­netic radi­a­tion in the vis­i­ble range, many of them to blue light in par­tic­u­lar. The spec­trum used should there­fore min­imise short-wave light (blue/​violet) as much as pos­si­ble. The rec­om­men­da­tion is to install street lights with max­i­mum 3000K. The lower the colour tem­per­a­ture, the more warm tones the light will have, and the less impact it will thus have on the animal king­dom. Wher­ever light­ing and urban devel­op­ment impinge on the habi­tat of sen­si­tive or endan­gered ani­mals, the rec­om­men­da­tion is to use max­i­mum 2 400K or the extremely warm »PC Amber« colour tone. We offer cor­re­spond­ing light colours as stan­dard in our new prod­uct ranges.

Reduced light inten­sity
Light should be no brighter than it needs to be. Where pos­si­ble, nor­ma­tive spec­i­fi­ca­tions should not be exceeded. Illu­mi­nated sur­faces also play a role: some mate­ri­als reflect more light back into the night sky than others. Every last detail counts here — we ensure that our lumi­naires do not light up their poles as well, for exam­ple.


Con­trolled light­ing
Light that adapts to the cir­cum­stances: it’s there when you need it and not when you don’t. Light­ing should be oper­a­tional accord­ing to use. Motion sen­sors or timer con­trols ensure light is pro­vided at the right time, and is oth­er­wise dimmed or switched off com­pletely.

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