Cabinet of Curiosities by Gordon Grice

Author:Gordon Grice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company

A dragonfly spends most of its life as a naiad. It can be a naiad for years, but it only lives as an imago for six to eight weeks. A dragonfly is so fast that it’s hard to catch. Just like houseflies and tiger beetles, it has big eyes that allow it to see in all directions at once and make it hard to sneak up on. Their fragile bodies come in many colors—metallic blue, black, brown, green, even red.

The dragonfly has a close cousin called the damselfly. They look a lot alike. Damselflies are usually more slender than dragonflies. The way to be certain which one you’re seeing is to wait until it lands. If it’s a dragonfly, it will hold its wings flat and out to the sides, the same way it does when it’s flying. It looks like a little airplane. If it is a damselfly, its wings will point backward instead of staying flat.

Damselflies catch insects in the air, just as dragonflies do. But they also attack bugs that are sitting around on plants.

Both dragonflies and damselflies belong to the order Odonata. Members of this ancient order have turned up in fossils at least 325 million years old—they predate the dinosaurs. How does an animal with no bones become a fossil? In the case of some ancient dragonflies, their bodies became trapped in sediment that was later compacted into limestone. The material of the insect’s body is gone, but the impression remains in stone. Sometimes the impression is so precise you can see the veins in the insect’s wings. Among these fossil dragonflies, some show a wingspan of 30 inches—about the same as a pigeon.

THE GREEN DARNER is the official insect for the state of Washington.

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