Looking in the Eyes of Dragonflies

I’ve always loved dragonflies. They are one of the most beautiful and most ancient of living creatures. Some of them have these incredible wingspans, hover low over the water, and then they seem to vanish in an instant. The hover and dart routine, I know you’ve seen it.

I find myself watching them sometimes if I’m not doing much of anything but sitting on the bank of a creek or a lake, mainly because I hear they sting. I haven’t figured out what they’re doing while they hovering and darting. Sometimes they just dart in front of your face, hoover for a second or two and then dart away. I suppose they’re feeding, but it might interest you to know, that whatever they’re doing, they only have 4-6 weeks to do it. Pretty short life span. Common in the bug world, I guess. It’s just hard to imagine with all the effort to metamorphise and learn how to fly like a helicopter and then fly off doing whatever it is you do, that you’re going to pretty much be dead by the end of the month. It didn’t surprise me, then, that the majority of their time, I found out, is spent looking for female dragonflies to mate with. Seems like we spend a good majority of our life doing the same thing.

Scientifically, and, right, who the hell cares, they’re called Odonata and the Suborder: Anisoptera (dragonflies) and Zygoptera (damselflies). There are subtle differences between the two, the biggest of which might be the placement of the eyes. The dragonfly’s eyes almost touch on the top and make up most of the head. The damselfly’s eyes are noticeably apart. So now don’t go around ponds, lakes and streams looking in the eyes of dragonflies to see if they’re Zygops or Anisops because, again, who the hell cares and they might sting you.

Odonatas start out their lives as larvae and breath through gills then they actually metamorphise into the adult flying version. Of course, they’re fish food for most of the time, so survival is a pretty good trick. Once they emerge, they fly away from the water and hide out in the near-by countryside so they can mature sexually. I’m not making this up. They also are taking precautions that the water supply that they were living in might dry up, so they can scout for new locations if the need arises. And that need to go back to the water arises when they reach their sexual maturity and are looking for dragonfly chicks.

Now this is the part I like. It’s going to sound real familiar. When a male encounters a receptive female, he uses the appendage at the end of his abdomen to grab her by the back of the neck and hangs on. (Okay so far?) Then both partners will curve their abdomens so that the female’s genitalia engages with this accessory organ on the male that has been personally stocked with sperm. This then forms the characteristic “wheel position.” Yeah, that’s right they have a “position.” This mating, depending on the specific species, can last from a few seconds to hours. (I know what you’re thinking.) Now this part is going to gross you out. Before the male ejects his own sperm into the female, he will sometimes remove any that may have already been deposited.

Let’s take that step by step. Okay, let’s not. We’ll just leave it that….females of the Order Odonata Anisoptera, sleep around. When she’s done with the egg laying, which she gets too as long as she doesn’t run into another male that she likes better, she flies off away from the water and doesn’t come back until she’s ready for more. That can only be a good thing, right?

Well odonates have been around for more than 325 million years. Makes you wonder how they pulled it off. Seems that the best thing about them is their resilient body shape. They have 3 pairs of legs which probably helps. They breath through their abdomens in the flying stage. That allows for some extreme adaptation to the environment as it changed over time, I guess. But Darwin also maintained that a species had to find a niche…..Odonates are aerial hunters like no other and no other species has tried to take over their niche successfully.

Now why did I tell you all that stuff about Dragonflies? Do a little useless survey around the office. Ask people if Dragonflies can sting you. I’ll bet it runs 10-1 or better that they say they don’t know or that they can sting you. I went around for 42 years believing my mother, who said that Dragonflies can sting you.

They don’t sting. They don’t do anything to otherwise bother humans except maybe hover in your face occasionally.