Slayers Gorgeous: The marvel that is a dragonfly

Damselflies are usually smaller and slimmer, more delicate and rest with their wings arranged alongside their bodies, and hover — virtually invisibly — low over water.

Dragonfly design hasn’t changed for around 150 million years. there are now around 5,000 species worldwide, 500 in india

I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was when I first saw it. Clinging to a twig, pale, waxy cream, wet transparent wings folded, huge globular eyes glistening. Then I realised it was a freshly-emerged dragonfly still pumping the blood into its wings and waiting for them to dry. To think this trembling insect had spent the last two or three years as a “nymph” underwater — terrorising tadpoles and small fish — and looking like no nymph or naiad ever should. The dragonfly larva is a little monster, armed with a hooked-tipped prehensile lower jaw (called the labium) that flicks out like a penknife into its victim and draws it into its mouth. Gargoyle eyes, gills in its rectum and propulsion via jet-propelled enemas complete the horror story.

But now it had emerged much as its ancestors had 300 million years ago — though some of them had wingspans of 90 cm (three feet!). Dragonfly design hasn’t changed for around 150 million years, and there are now around 5,000 species worldwide, 500 in India. They belong to the clan Odonata or the “toothed ones”. And they’re aerial combatants and predators par excellence.

Their cellophane wings, often beautifully stained with colour and powered by powerful flight muscles, can beat together or separately depending on the maneuver required and enable them to touch 90 kmph. Fine hair on the joints of their necks give them stability and orientation. Their eyes, equipped with 10,000-28,000 individual lenses, are the best in the business, though it could pose a challenge if the insect needs to change its contact lenses. Their six legs form a barbed basket into which victims are scooped and then chomped. The segments in their bodies are arranged diagonally to absorb the impact of the creatures slamming into a wasp or butterfly (which has no chance) at high speed. No quarter is given or asked; they are fiercely territorial and protective of their airspace (I have been charged by one) and will eat one another, and also their more delicate cousins, the damselflies.

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Dragonflies are chauvinistic lovers too: the male first transfers sperm from the front of its abdomen to a special sperm “skybag” behind its neck. Then he goes looking for the girls and will hover in front of one when he finds her. His rear end is equipped with special claspers, and with these he will grab the female by the scruff of her neck and fly off with her. The lady in turn will bend her body round so its tip enters the skybag thus completing the evocative daisy wheel we see. Eggs are laid usually in water, or on plants growing in water — and sometimes on road surfaces that shimmer with aqueous mirages.

Damselflies are usually smaller and slimmer, more delicate and rest with their wings arranged alongside their bodies, and hover — virtually invisibly — low over water. The dragons, so much like World War I fighter planes, have caught the imagination of children the world over who tether them and “fly” them. (They have a reflex which causes their wings to beat automatically the moment their legs leave their perch.) They’re called “horse stingers”, though neither sting nor bite horses or humans, but do pick off insects hovering over the animals.

These are days of the dragons for post-monsoon is high-season for them (as is pre-monsoon). Watch them hunt through binoculars and be glad that they’ve shrunk. Imagine being buzzed by something like that with a three-feet wingspan!

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