Dragonflies Chasing Mosquitoes
Flies are just disgusting. Modern dragonflies have wingspans of only two to five inches, but fossil dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet.
Dragonflies descend in droves - and mosquitoes are on the menu
Its four wings come out, and they dry and harden over the next several hours to days. They can fly straight up and down, hover like a helicopter and even mate mid-air. A single dragonfly can eat 30 to hundreds of mosquitoes per day. Little is known about this behavior, but the Dragonfly Swarm Project is collecting reports on swarms to better understand the behavior. Report a swarm here. They found that green darners from New Jersey traveled only every third day and an average of 7.
14 Fun Facts About Dragonflies
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If you think this is spectacular, wait till you hear this. Occasionally, the nymph will venture out of the water to get a quick snack from the land. As Nymphs, the dragonflies eat mosquito larvae, other aquatic insects and worms, and for a little variety even small aquatic vertebrates like tadpoles and small fish. Once they are ready to leave their aquatic homes, they crawl above the water surface, molt to shed their skin one last time before they take to the skies as elegant dragonflies.
Adult Dragonflies are born rulers of their domain and they prove it to just about every insect that thinks it can pull a fast one on this killing machine. The adult dragonfly uses the basket formed by its legs to catch insects while flying.
The adult dragonfly likes to eat gnats, mayflies, flies, mosquitoes and other small flying insects. They sometimes eat butterflies , moths and bees too.
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From bees to mosquitoes, dragonflies make a meal out of what they please and can hunt down insects on a whim, callously plucking them out of thin air after out-flying outmaneuvering and them in the chase that does not normally last very long. Such is the power that the dragonfly is equipped with and given its low-energy speed capability, very, very few insects can escape its basket shaped grabbing limbs that it uses to clutch on to its prey before crushing the critter into a gooey mass, with its powerful mandibles and swallowing it. Adult dragonflies eat just about anything that is edible and can be caught.
They are a treasure for humanity because they keep mosquito populations under strict control by feasting on them when they are in abundance. Similarly, they also feed on ants, termites, butterflies, gnats, bees and other insects and tend to hunt in groups when large colonies of ants or termites are spotted.
They are considered a pest by apiaries because they can polish off a good chunk of the bee population before one can realize the threat looming large. Writing about what dragonflies eat makes one wonder what would be the case if some of the older dragonfly species that have been found as fossils existed today.