Eye to eye dragonfly

I wonder if the people who invented the helicopter drew inspiration from the dragonfly. The thought came to me recently when, while I was in the boat fishing, a red dragonfly parked itself in midair just a couple of feet from my eyes, then darted off.

Imagine: Flight without the imperative of forward speed and thrust. The ability to start, stop, rise, fall, hover, at any point in air, must have captivated creative aviation minds. The inventors couldn’t duplicate the dragonflies’ large wing surface area or their ultralight airframe, so they came up with rotors. Their machines, of course, can’t approach a dragonfly’s agility.

I don’t need to ask if your lake has dragonflies – it does, and likely several species. While we see them in the air and in terrestrial places, dragonflies are most assuredly water creatures. In fact they spend most of their lifecycle underwater, where few of us see them – only perhaps those who in summertime may thrash a metal-framed net around the bases of shoreline cattails or other plants to collect the nymphs for fishing bait. (I used to do that, and the nymphs, often incorrectly called hellgrammites, are deadly on bluegills.)

The dragonfly lifecycle typically lasts more than a year and can take as long as four or five years, depending on habitat quality and the availability of food for the nymphs. Adult dragonflies live only two to four months; the rest of the lifecycle is the nymph stage. After mating with a male (surely you have seen two dragonflies cruising around in tandem), the female lays tiny eggs, hundreds of them, on emergent plants, or sometimes directly into the water.

Newly hatched nymphs are carnivores – they have extendable jaws for catching small insects or plankton creatures. Nymphs breath through gills in their bodies. While they mainly get about on six legs, they can scoot ahead by issuing a jet of water through the anus. As nymphs grow, they shed their skin a dozen times or more (sort of like outgrowing and discarding suits of clothing) until they reach maturity. At that point (and who knows how they know?) the nymph grabs onto a reed or some other plant and climbs into the open air. There it begins to breathe. The skin breaks open behind the head and the adult dragonfly slowly emerges. It takes time for the dragonfly’s wings and body to dry – during that time it is vulnerable to all manner of predators. Ultimately, it takes off to begin its aerobatic life of feeding on midges, flies and, we fervently hope, mosquitoes.

You can find an excellent and much more detailed (and illustrated) description of the dragonfly lifecycle at http://citizenscientistsleague.com/2011/12/15/dragonfly-life-cycle-and-metamorphosis/. And of course you can simply appreciate the wonder of dragonfly aviation at any time, over the waters of the lake you love.