Dragonflies are beautiful insects

I was walking beside a motorway (the footpath was screened off by a metal fence) and noticed a dragonfly circling me. I put out my hand and it landed (see above). It stayed there quite a while, unafraid – until eventually my arm got tired and I waved it away.

Dragonflies are beautiful insects, with delicate wings and striking colours. They prey on other insects and, contrary to popular belief, never bite humans or animals (the folk name “Horse Biter” probably comes from their habit of circling horses to feed off the inevitable flies). They have fantastic compound eyes with thirty thousand different light-sensing facets arranged so that they have 360 degree vision (isn’t the army is trying to develop a sighting device based on the structure of the dragonfly’s eye?).

Most of the dragonfly’s life-cycle is spent underwater in a laval stage, emerging to the surface for a few weeks before dying. Fossils have been found of prehistoric dragonflies with a wingspan of about thirty inches. They can reach flying speeds of up to 38 mph.

Images of dragonflies have been found on Bronze-Age seal stones in Crete. Generally in Europe the dragonfly has a sinister reputation (undeserved). The earliest recorded use of the word Dragon-Fly is in Francis Bacon’s rambling Sylva Sylvarum of 1627.

When I was about five or six I remember the teacher at the school I went to reading aloud a story about three elves or dwarves making a boat called the Dragonfly and sailing along a river. I think the book was called The Little Grey Men. Since then I have always had positive feelings towards dragonflies (shows you power of pre-adolescent conditioning).



Above: modern sculpture of a dragonfly at a commercial exhibition (click on the image to get the full impact). Dragonflies are one of the defining motifs of Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau was greatly influenced by Japanese art, Japan being a culture where dragonflies are respected (Akitsushmi, which means Dragonfly Island, is an ancient name for Japan).