Lifespan: 7 – 56 days (Adult)
Scientific name: Anisoptera
Phylum: Arthropoda
Rank: Infraorder
Kingdom: Animalia
Last year, during our trip to Florida to visit Grandma and friends, we took an airboat swamp tour to teach the kids about wetland ecosystems. While on the boat, this little fella landed on the hand of a fellow passenger. After thanking the heavens for not having it land on me, thus forcing me to jump into alligator infected waters in total panic, I made a homeschool lesson out of it. This is what we learned.
Dragonflies evolved some 300 million years ago and early fossils have been found with wingspans of up to two feet.
They belong to the order Odonata, which means “toothed one” in Greek and refers to the dragonfly’s serrated teeth.
In their larval stage, dragonflies are aquatic and eat just about anything including tadpoles, mosquitoes, fish, other insect larvae and even each other.
(Kinda like kids over summer break but without the bugs).
The flight of the dragonfly is so special that it has inspired engineers who dream of making robots that fly like dragonflies.
If they can’t fly, they’ll starve because they only eat prey they catch while flying as opposed to me who can basically eat everything while doing anything. Dragonflies catch their insect prey by grabbing it with their feet.
(Like my kids grabbing French fries from the floor of the minivan while we are driving).
Nearly all of their head is eye, so they have incredible vision that can see everything except straight behind them.
A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day.
A dragonfly called the globe skinner has the longest migration of any insect—11,000 miles back and forth across the Indian Ocean.
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