Dear Hudson,

The other day I walked into a cloud of gnats. I love insects, but it was unpleasant to have all those critters fly into my whiskers.

I asked my friend Rich Zack what they were doing. He’s an insect scientist at Washington State University.

He told me that most insects are individualistic. They don’t usually fly together in groups—unless they need to mate or travel. Then, some insects form a group called a swarm.

“The purpose of the adult insect is to mate,” Zack said. “They have short lives—so short that a lot of them don’t even feed as adults. So, the mating period is very important to them.”

That’s what my gnats were doing.

The conditions outside were just right, so a bunch of male gnats showed up in the same place. When female gnats got there, it was easy for them to find a mate—because everybody was together.

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