Creature From The Distant Past- The Dragonfly

On the sunny days of the warm months, while I'm out tending to my vegetable garden, or strolling around the pond, I'm often accompanied by winged hunters that cruise back and forth in their never ending search for food. Recently, when I managed to kill a fly that had landed on my arm, while a dragonfly circled about, I decided to throw the fly in the air to see what would happen. Just as I suspected, the dragonfly zoomed in and caught the fly in mid air, devouring its juices with great relish. Then he circled around me, as if expecting another treat!

In the prehistoric jungles of 280-350 millions of years ago, when trees were towering giants, dragonflies as big as hawks soared through the air. Their prehistoric remains have been found in the Permian rocks of Kansas, in the Jurassic formations of Siberia and many other parts of the world. With wings nearly thirty inches from tip to tip, they were the largest insects that ever lived.

Indeed, dragonflies, along with cockroaches and silverfish, were one of the earliest insect forms to appear on earth. The dragonfly has lived on as a creature from the distant past to this day, even while the dinosaurs passed into oblivion, and cavemen evolved into modern man. The only thing that changed about the dragonfly was its size. As the giant trees dwarfed, the dragonfly has adapted by shrinking.

The dragonfly is very much a creature of the air and of the sun. Although it has legs, which are spine-bordered and bunched forward, so it can cling and climb, it never walks. But in the air, a dragonfly is as graceful as a ballet dancer, while it swoops, turns, and zooms about at will. It can dive like a small plane, or hover like a helicopter, as long as the sun is shining.

Most dragonflies need the sun to fly, (except for one Oriental species that hunts at night,) and will alight even when the sun goes behind a cloud for a few minutes. Recently, while I was picking ripe tomatoes in the garden, a dragonfly circled around me curiously.

Suddenly, the sun went behind a cloud, and the dragonfly instantly alighted on a near-by weed. I reached out and caught it, and it sat on my finger undisturbed, while I examined it closely. Then the cloud passed by, the sunshine returned, and the little dragonfly leaped into the air and darted off after some annoying gnats that had gathered about. Dragonflies scoop up their victims with their legs, sucking their bodies dry and letting the carcasses fall to the ground.

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