Rods: Flying Absurdities
Do these invisible flying creatures really exist?
Filed under Aliens & UFOs, Cryptozoology
| Skeptoid #03 October 19, 2006 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe Also available in Japanese |
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From the cryptozoology files, we're going to look today at rods, those magical, mystical living UFO's that inhabit the invisible shadowlands of Earth.
Rods are said to be flying creatures, from a few inches to a few feet in length, that are invisible to humans, but visible to cameras, both film and digital, both still and video. Their bodies are shaped like long thin rods, and their only appendages are wavy wings, one on each side, stretching the full length of their bodies. They move through the air by undulating these wings, like eels swimming through water.
A gentleman named Jose Escamilla claims to be the discoverer of rods. On his web site, Roswellrods.com, he says that he first captured rods on video in 1994. He says he was taping UFO's when he accidentally filmed the rods as well. Since Mr. Escamilla did not recall seeing any such thing in person while he was taping, he decided the most likely explanation for his video is that he'd discovered a new species of flying creature that is invisible to humans, and only shows up on film or video.
Since then, innumerable photographs and videos have surfaced that purport to show rods. Search the Internet, and you'll find hundreds of them.
If rods are as ubiquitous as it would seem they are, why is their existence not generally accepted? Justification for the existence of rods requires that four basic claims be proven or at least shown to be reasonable:
- There should be zoological precedences for the existence of undiscovered insects up to a meter in length. New species are being discovered all the time, so I think we should grant this one. It's certainly possible that there are undiscovered flying creatures a meter in length.
- We must accept the existence of creatures that are invisible, although they're up to a meter in length and perhaps up to several inches wide. Discounting microscopic organisms, the natural world offers no better than transparency, such as that found in some species of jellyfish. Transparency is not invisibility. Supporters of rods have not proven that invisibility in the animal kingdom is possible, and they will need to do so by presenting an invisible animal.
- Certain images must be visible only in the output of all types of visible wavelength cameras, but not visible to the naked eye. When cameras output their images to the final medium, be it film, paper, or a video screen, we see their output because our eyes see the same visible wavelengths that were recorded and output. We're not talking about thermographic or other non-visible-wavelength camera technologies here, so rod supporters will need to prove that all standard cameras can convert certain invisible wavelengths into visible ones, without affecting the visible wavelengths; which is something those cameras were not designed to do. Only with this proof can it be reasonably accepted that it's possible for a camera to see something that was invisible to the photographer.
- Even if all of the above can be substantiated, there needs to be a lack of a more likely explanation. If a simple procedure can be shown to easily reproduce the appearance of rods on camera, then we haven't even established that there is a phenomenon to be investigated.
As you might expect, there is indeed an alternate explanation, and a simple procedure to take a picture showing rods. Picture yourself standing with the sun at your back, facing a large shaded area, such as the shaded entrance to a cave. Dragonflies (or other insects) are flying everywhere, darting back and forth at around 20mph, which is about 29 feet per second (dragonflies can hit 60mph). Take a photograph, with a common shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. In that time, the dragonfly will travel about 12 inches. Because your exposure is set for the dark background, the path traced by the dragonfly's transit will be overexposed and will appear solid white. The dragonfly will make one full wingbeat in in that time (some insects would beat their wings twenty times in 1/30th of a second), so the path described by its wingtip on your film image would be one full sine wave period, twelve inches long. There would be one of these sine waves down each side of the twelve-inch-long rod shaped track traced by the dragonfly's moving body.
This phenomenon is so common that most any professional photographer can tell you about being plagued by it while trying to take outdoor photographs or video in similar lighting conditions. Nevertheless, the resulting image is strange enough that someone not familiar with photography basics might conclude that the subject in the photograph was in fact twelve inches long with undulating wings, and the photographer would be absolutely correct in stating that he did not see any twelve inch long flying creatures with his naked eye.
The conclusion from all this is that rods are a well known, well established, and well understood byproduct of photography. The proposed alternate explanation, that they are an unknown and invisible lifeform only seen by cameras, requires that some pretty outrageous claims about invisibility and photography be proven. Until they are, or until a rod is captured and can be studied, I see no reason to suspect that such things might exist.
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© 2006 Skeptoid Media, Inc. Copyright information
References & Further Reading
Alexander, David E. Nature's Flyers: Birds, Insects and the Biomechanics of Flight. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 89.
Escamilla, Jose. "About Roswell Rods." Roswell Rods. Roswell Rods, 16 Jan. 2008. Web. 31 Oct. 2009. <http://www.roswellrods.com/story.html>
Island, Kal. "Hey, What's all the Bugaboo?" Popular Science. 1 Nov. 1995, Volume 247, Number 5: 83.
Kaku, Michu. Physics of the Impossible, a Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. New York: Doubleday, 2008. 16-33.
Sol. "Conclusion: Escamilla's "rods" are motion-blurred bugs." Sol's 'Rods' Study. Opendb, 8 Apr. 1998. Web. 9 Dec. 2009. <http://opendb.com/sol/conclusion.htm>
Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian.
"Rods: Flying Absurdities." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
19 Oct 2006. Web.
6 Sep 2010. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4004>
Discuss!
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
I liked this one too...
Mr.A-I've just filmed an invisible creature!
Mr.B-How did you know where to point the camera?
Mr.A--E.T. was pointing at something and when I looked there was NOTHING there.
P.S. it's midnight here in UK.Bye
Neil Griffiths, cardiff,wales,uk
November 24, 2006 3:57pm
I've followed this for a while and thought it was so crazy that it may just be a put-on (like the flying spaghetti monster church). I have wondered though if the particular photographic phenomenon is made worse by the CCD chips more comon on still and video cameras in the last few decades. I don't think I see as many of them on old photos, and almost all the examples I do see appear to be digital photos.
Trevor, Pasadena
February 23, 2007 12:14pm
can u make it clear all what happening.... is that a real alien or undisvovered spieces
james, cagayan de oro city
August 12, 2007 5:21am
My children, other folks & I have seen 'rods' in my home...not on photography, but with the naked I. I did not know what they were for a while. I keep documents of all my paranormal experiences. :)
Cindy Sloan, Tennessee
September 10, 2007 1:15pm
Wow, this is definetly the wierdest thing ever, an undiscovered species that can only be caught with a photographic machine. I wonder if these "rods" can be manipulated to make thing invisible. I do hope that we find out what these things are.
J.R.Brown, Louisville,Ky
October 03, 2007 6:43pm
"MonsterQuest" on the History Channel just showed that one rod they caught on film was, in fact, just a moth! Most rods are actually just flying objects distorted by the camera.
Watcher, USA
January 13, 2008 7:56pm
Rods are camera aberrations of moths, birds, bugs, etc. created by the manner of which cameras use to capture an image at slow speeds. The same applies to shutter speed and film cameras. What bunk! I can't believe I watched that show!
Dan Szwarc, Michigan
January 19, 2008 6:06pm
Just listened to this cast on Rods. Very interesting and I agree with your assessment. I would like to point out that there are types of light which cameras, especially digital cameras (CCDs) can see that are invisible to the human eye.
Try pointing your tv remote at your cell phone camera and pressing a button on the remote. You will see the remote flashing light. This is infrared light, the camera can clearly see it, we can't.
Ciao and keep up the good work.
Mike Gaskin, Winnipeg Canada
February 06, 2008 6:30pm
I always thought the whole thing was just a tongue-in-cheek pun. A sort of inside joke between photographers so to speak.
BeijingRob, Beijing
March 10, 2008 9:28am
i have seen the flying rods with my eyes. i dont need a camera. saw them in 1975 when i was a kid. they look like a straw with 3 wings on each side.wings are square look funny and it hums like high voltage powerlines kinda like a humming bird. overall body was like 8 to 13 inches long. never will forget becaus it scared the hell out of me. they where hovering looking at me moving back and forword studing me. weird but true
jesse gongora, corpus christi tx
April 09, 2008 11:59pm
Well I too was a skeptic but yesterday while working on my roof one flew right by me. I was from 18 to 24 inches long and made a sound similar to a playing card attached to a bicycle spokes.
Doc Wirebaugh, Ohio
April 24, 2008 7:51am
Dudes, I doubt you saw one while on your roof, and when was the last time a rod was spotted hovering?
Phil Brady, Okalahoma
May 02, 2008 3:55pm
How can you see a light spectrum in a photograph that you cannot see with your naked eye? It must be magic!
You saw a rod with your naked eye? I thought it took a camera capable of 10,000th/sec frame rate. Anyone called you Superman lately?
I saw a rod after being on my roof too. It was when I hit the ground after falling off. Ha Ha!
Unbelieveable, Rio Rancho, NM
May 03, 2008 3:35am
For starters when you talk about invisibility, they wouldn't have to be invisible to go unseen by the naked eye.
If i remember correctly(correct me if i'm wrong as i am no scientist and may not have my facts straight) the human eye sees at about twenty-five frames per secound because that is the limit of how much information our brains can processes at a time. If something were to be traveling fast enough we would not be able to see it because by the time our brains processed the input from our eyes it would already be gone. Most video camera's shoot at about thirty frames per secound, so it's possible they might catch a glimpse of something moving too fast for the naked eye to see.
I have heard of a theory that these things are actualy four dimensional and that we are only seeing a small part of it.
Imagine a stick man on a piece of paper, he exsists in a two-dimensional universe, up and down simply doesn't exsist for him because it is literaly outside his perception. Now imagine someone stepped on this piece of paper, the stick man would see the foot-prints acrossed the page because they are in his universe but to him they would just suddenly appear and disappear because he wouldn't be able to see what was making them.
Maybe these things exsist in another dimension and every now and then some part of them crosses into our three-dimensional space just for an instant.
Joshua, Hogeye Arkansas
May 05, 2008 10:33pm
I think you just need to see my no-huddle offense in action and you will believe in rods. I love you.
Gus Malzahn, Tulsa, OK
May 23, 2008 9:47pm
brian,whats your opinion of monsrerquests rod documentry?
oronzo, south korea
August 06, 2008 7:16am
Great Podcaste, the doco's a good one and they do show up in alot of strange places, and sure they bug me, they even destroyed a date i was on with a hot chick (my fault for talking about rods on a date) they must be bollocks otherwise why are they silent. Something traveling as fast of faster than a bullet makes alot of sound, keep em coming Brian.
Matthew Ireland, Wellington New Zealand
August 20, 2008 2:50am
As much as it would be awesome to discover the existence of such oddities, common sense should tell everyone who is wasting money and time on this ridiculous notion, that the reason these things only appear on slow shutter cams is because they are an optical illusion CREATED by the slow shutter speed of the camera that is capturing the image. If you use a HIGH SPEED camera to capture the same image, at the same angle, you would discover that the anomalies you are "discovering" are nothing more than common insects which appear elongated due to the inability of the camera to capture the precise movement of the flying creature, which is usually a moth, or a dragonfly.
Rob H, Manning SC
October 26, 2008 3:52pm
I've seen one....
when I lived in canada, out on the front porch in a thunderstorm one night , in a lightning flash, i saw one dive towards me about ten feet above the ground, dive down in front of be and speed directly away again.... all in the space of one lightning flash.....
I'd guess it may have been about 5" long and a couple of inches wide, with the 'wavy fins' on each side.
all in a lightning flash!....
Paul m
Paul Milsom, leigh on sea UK
February 02, 2009 3:18pm
While my husband and I were in Mexico on vacation,we had a piture taken of us stsnding on the deck of the Hard Rock Cafe'. Right between us in the picture you can see a black rod, horizontal between us.It was about two foot long from right below our waist to right below our chin, and no we never noticed it until my pictures were develoed.So I must say yes they are real, what are they,only they know.
susan S, Indiana
February 03, 2009 3:31pm
brian, i've seen plenty of pictures with mosquitoes, dragon flies, bats, etc., and none of them have ever looked like rods. get some imagination and open your mind to the possibility of something beyond what you know. which is exactly why i did not give you my real name. this may become my new favorite site
nobody, wahington d.c
February 11, 2009 7:18pm
I am just a kid but i really care about the ALIEN,UFO,FLYING RODS,EL CHUPACABRA,FLYING HUMANOID and THE TIME TRAVEL
My FRIENDSTER/Yahoo Messenger: edzen_garcia@yahoo.com
Edzen, Philippines
February 20, 2009 7:55pm
OMG my mom said she watched a documetary about these and she told me that they can be like a foot long......hell no.........flyin footlong sticks
Angelea Scott, conyers, GA
March 10, 2009 6:31pm
I witnessed one flying object about 8 feet long - white colored about 15 years back. It was about 8PM in the night and our family was preparing for a function next day and I look at the sky and see this thing flying. May be one second or may be 2. When I mentioned - everyone laughed and forgot. I still remember the sight vividly and it was not through a camera
John, Kumta, India
March 17, 2009 1:20am
On your #3: Most cameras will also capture some near infrared; you can record white flashes coming out of a TV remote whenever you press a button with a standard digital camera. I was shown this with a Sony Camcorder, and have also tried it with a 5yo Canon Powershot.
Mark, Cincinnati
March 18, 2009 6:47am
I have often wondered if the things that I have fleeting glimpses of out of the corner of my eye could possibly be this "rod" phenom. It is not unreasonable that there are life forms that we haven't discovered yet.
Paul, Franklin N.C.
April 02, 2009 12:43pm
Paul, The probability of undiscovered organisms is approximately 1, most of which are microorganisms, and most of the rest are probably tropical insects.
However, you're probably describing floaters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater.
Mark, Cincinnati
April 07, 2009 8:35am
Brian, I often get a good chuckle from your podcasts, particularly these more ridiculous ones. I always think in the back of my mind that no one would be so deluded as to believe this, but it only takes a trip to your comments section for an unsettling look at the sad truth.
Keep up the good work!
Casey K., Riverside, CA
June 01, 2009 1:38pm
It is quite simple, have you ever seen the wings of a humming bird? In some way they can generate movement in such a manner as not to be seen by normal methods.
How do you think all those crazy UFOs stay hidden; if you were able to create enough energy, through the use of the Earth's own magnetic field, you would have nearly limitless power.
Travelor, on the coast, smoking weed, and waiting for the end
October 05, 2009 4:38am
ive been messing around with a few different cameras and haven yet seen a 'rod' but this doesn't mean i don't believe, i think its only a matter f time before i capture one on film.
your info has been quite interesting.
jake, auckland
October 18, 2009 5:40am
I have recently watched a programme on tv about rods which lead me to google them & find this site. I don't know if I am a believer or not to be honest, but after reading the info on this page I have a simple question in my mind which makes me think. If the rods are a product of insects being elongated or morphed on film to look like theses rods then why when people have captured them on film in the past, have they failed to re-capture them on film after endlessly revisiting the original spots they discovered them in. Surely if they were just insects they would still inhabit these areas & those people would see them on film everytime. Mmmmmmmm so there you have it. Just something which was bugging me.
Claire, England
October 25, 2009 10:40pm
If the case is a camera shutter speed it can easily been verified by using 2 cameras with different speeds at the same time. One with 1/30 of a second speed and one say two times faster 1/60 and set them to shoot the same “Rod” . The same Rod should appear in 2 different lengths. This will give a hard evidence if the “camera shutter speed hypothesis “ is correct
Vitas, UK
October 26, 2009 2:52pm
can you provide some proof of your expertise and qualifications in both zoology and camera and video technology please? can you also provide some video of rods / insects that you have made yourself (seeing as you claim is very simple and easy) to prove your comments. Can you actually prove with physical evidence that all rod footage is insects? ..... lets see ....
Baz, UK
November 01, 2009 7:37am
This episode qualifies as my favorite urban myth that I'd never heard of until this podcast. Thanks for expanding my horizons! I will watch out for the rods ... since they're invisible, they might be watching me even now!
Abby, Austin, TX
February 17, 2010 9:19pm
Nice disinformation piece. But...it's too late. Daedulus has been removed. It's begun, time to choose sides.
JAG, Palmdale
April 01, 2010 10:37pm
I honistally think I might believe in them.. I know that the camera has a big thing to do with it... but explain the drawings from hundreds of years ago in caves, of pictures of rods (or what looks like rods) I have as well seen the programs, and I really find this topic intresing.. Ill do more reasearch.
Madeline, Madison, wisconsin
May 20, 2010 9:07am
Brian, I have been enjoying some of your previous episodes of Skeptoid and am a big fan.
However, your argument against rods does not seem to follow critical thinking, you state
"Transparency is not invisibility. Supporters of rods have not proven that invisibility in the animal kingdom is possible, and they will need to do so by presenting an invisible animal."
I would like you to explain how you could present an invisible animal!!
Also as a counter argument - the scientific community has also not proven that invisibility is not possible, has there ever been a study to look for invisible animals? (are you presenting an excluded middle argument here!!)
Remember, before microscopes whole worlds were unknown to us, there may be others we don't know about until the right equipment comes along. Whilst I tend to agree with your explanation of rods, to dismiss totally is I feel going too far, new creatures are still discovered on a regular basis.
Peter Robinson, Carlisle, England
July 13, 2010 6:32am
Thanks for this podcast. I am an amateur photographer, and I get furious listening to these people say it must be a creature that looks exactly like what the photo shows. Would you say someone must actually be blurry because the picture of them made them look blurry?
A photograph takes in light for a certain amount of time and merges all of this light into one picture. If you move your hand across the frame while the film/sensor is being exposed, it will create a blurred image of your hand in those areas. It will also partly show the background area behind your hand if that light reaches the camera while the shutter is open.
For those who want to see what this looks like, and what these bugs really look like, go to this video and see for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEurk1JPo-w
Again, thanks for the podcast.
Gary, Philadelphia
July 14, 2010 4:20pm
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John Takolander, Finland
November 12, 2006 10:53pm