Dragonflies
Quick Facts
Common Name: Dragonfly
Scientific Name: Anisoptera
Mature height: up to 10cms body length and a 6cm wingspan
Weight: upto 1000mg
Lifespan: 7 - 56 Days
Origin: Native
Information
Dragonflies are beautiful, iridescent flying insects of the Odonata order which includes damselflies but dragonflies specifically belong to the sub-order Anisoptera meaning “unequal wing” as their hindwing is broader.
Mainly, adult dragonflies eat other flying insects, particularly midges and mosquitoes.
At the shortest, a dragonfly’s natural life-cycle from egg to death of adult is about 6 months. Some of the larger dragonflies take 6 or 7 years!
Dragonflies have extremely good vision, which they use to locate and catch small insects in flight. Like most insects, they have compound eyes. In the case of dragonflies the eyes contain several thousand individual facets, each containing a tiny lens.