Dragonfly amazing animals
A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the order ‘Odonata’. Dragonflies are are not actually a fly even
though they both have six legs and three body parts, head, thorax and abdomen. The main difference between them is that flies only have two wings whereas dragonflies have four wings. Dragonflies are sometimes confused with Damselflies
Even though they are both members of the same order, they have slight differences whereby when resting, damselflies hold their wings together, a dragonfly holds its wings horizontally or slightly down and forward and their hindwings are broader near the base.
The eyes on a damselfly are separated, in most dragonflies the eyes touch. However, being in the same order makes their life cycles quite similar. The Dragonfly name comes from their fierce jaws, which they use to catch their prey
:DRAGONFLY CHARACTERISTICS
A Dragonfly has two large compound eyes which take up most of its head. Dragonflies have long, delicate, membranous wings which are transparent and some have light yellow colouring near the tips. Their bodies are long and slender and they have a short antennae.
Dragonflies are very colourful, for example the Green Darner Dargonfly has a green thorax and a blue segmented abdomen. Some are red like the Comet Darner and yellow like the Emerald Darner.
Dragonflies breath through spiracles which are tiny holes located on their abdomen. They can beat each pair of wings together or separately and their rear wings can be out of phase with the front wings. Their wing beat is around 50 – 90 beats per second.
Dragonflies have complicated neck muscles which allow them to tilt their head sideways 180 degrees, back 70 degrees and down 40 degrees.
Dragonflies can hover in mid air and then rapidly accelerate. Traveling at almost 30 miles per hour, dragonflies are the fastest insects in the UK
woooow
ReplyDeletegraaaet
ReplyDelete