dragonfly facts??

i did a lot of reading about griffinflies for a joke powerpoint my 3-person biology class did last term, and i ended up reading a lot about dragonflies as a result as well (duh). did you know that dragonflies have the VERRY unique ability to flap each of their wings individually??? 

for reference, other arthropods flap their wings in tandem by flexing and relaxing one muscle in their thorax (indirect flight muscles), while dragonflies have four individual muscles (direct flight muscles) (see below for my awful diagram)

dragonflies ALSO have some of the highest hunting success rates in the animal kingdom. some of the most deadly aerial predators in the world, like falcons and eagles, only have about a 20-25% success rates. even terrestrial animals that hunt in packs like hyenas or wolves only have around a 67% success rate. but dragonflies? they push a 100% HUNTING SUCCESS RATE. 

that’s largely attributed to the fact that they utilise a very rare hunting strategy in aerial predators called interception! most animals will find prey and chase it until they catch it—this is called tracking. Interception, however, involves observing the prey and predicting where it will end up running in order to intercept its path. This requires a WHOLE lot more smarts, and seems implausible for a dragonfly considering how little neurones it’s got. Because of this, we theorise that interception is actually a built in behaviour—as opposed to humans, where interception is actually a learned behaviour.

sorry i weally like dragonflies they’re actually kinda kool