Various paranormal interpretations of this phenomenon appear in popular culture. One of the more outspoken proponents of rods as alien life forms was the late Jose Escamilla, who claimed to have been the first to film them on March 19, 1994 in Roswell, New Mexico, while attempting to film a UFO. Escamilla later made additional videos and embarked on lecture tours to promote his claims.
Optical analysis
columnist Cecil Adams called rods a hoax "where unscrupulous people are exploiting a gullible public for profit", and said that investigators have shown that rods are mere tricks of light which result from how images of flying insects are recorded and played back. In particular, the fast passage before the camera of an insect flapping its wings has been shown to produce rodlike effects, due to motion blur, if the camera is shooting with relatively long exposure times. In August 2005, China Central Television aired a two-part documentary about flying rods in China. It reported the events from May to June of the same year at Tonghua Zhenguo Pharmaceutical Company in Tonghua City, Jilin Province, which debunked the flying rods. Surveillance cameras in the facility's compound captured video footage of flying rods identical to those shown in Jose Escamilla's video. Getting no satisfactory answer to the phenomenon, curious scientists at the facility decided that they would try to solve the mystery by attempting to catch these airborne creatures. Huge nets were set up and the same surveillance cameras then captured images of rods flying into the trap. When the nets were inspected, the "rods" were no more than regular moths and other ordinary flying insects. Subsequent investigations proved that the appearance of flying rods on video was an optical illusion created by the slower recording speed of the camera. After attending a lecture by Jose Escamilla, UFO investigator Robert Sheaffer wrote that "some of his “rods” were obviously insects zipping across the field at a high angular rate" and others appeared to be “appendages” which were birds' wings blurred by the camera exposure.
In the manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, the Stone Ocean arc features a character named Rykiel with the Stand ability "Sky High" that allows him to control "rods", here described as real animals, and use them to attack his enemies by absorbing their body heat.
In the 2015 Kemono Friends mobile game, appears as a playable Friend and minor character.
