Richard Preston

The dragonfly is an exceptionally beautiful insect and a fierce carnivore. It has four wings that beat independently. This gives it an ability to maneuver in the air with superb dexterity. A dragonfly can put on a burst of speed, stop on a dime, hover, fly backward, and switch direction in a flash. This is a hunting behavior known as hawking.

American Writer

Dragonflies kill their prey in the air and eat it on the wing. They feed on aerial plankton, which consists of any sort of small living thing that happens to be aloft - mosquitoes, midges, moths, flies, ballooning spiders.

Luis Alberto Urrea

It's almost easy for me to write about a magnificent tropical village with orchids and dragonflies. That's intoxicating, but the United States is magical, too. We just forget this.

Mexican Poet

Ziggy Marley

This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened.

Jamaican Musician

Jane Goodall

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I'd caused the dragonfly to be killed.

English Scientist

The annual flight of the dragonflies goes mostly unnoticed, though it is one of the great migrations of flying creatures that occur across North America.

Gary Larson

I remember one time watching a bird snatch a dragonfly out of midair and thinking, 'Gee, life can come to an end - crunch! - just like that.

American Cartoonist

Louie Schwartzberg

When a dragonfly flutters by, you may not realize, but it's the greatest flier in nature. It can hover, fly backwards, even upside down.

American Director

Park Yeon-mi

I had to look for food all the time. I had to catch dragonflies, grasshoppers, and that was the only source of protein for me.

North Korean Activist

Dragonflies are commonly found near water, so mentioning them suggests a natural, aquatic setting.

Natural Habitat

Dragonflies are noted for their bright colors and are often used to describe vibrant, noticeable objects.

Visibility

In various cultures, dragonflies symbolize change, adaptability, and a sense of freedom.

Symbolism

 dragonflies while they're flying we'd like to look at the individual nerve cells these are the brain cells or neurons as we call them and think about how they steer the animals so a simple example would be playing tennis where you're simultaneously doing two things you're looking at something moving through the world say ball for example and you're predicting where it's going

Tiny Backpacks Tap into...

 They have really sharp mandibles, are generally pretty aggressive, which I guess also helps them to be really good predators. In order to learn what's going on inside the dragonfly's brain when it sees a prey, we're going to eavesdrop in on a conversation between the eyes and the wings, and to do that, we need to anesthetize the dragonfly on ice

How a dragonfly's brain...

 well probably one of the highest tributes for anyone working in the natural world is to have a newly discovered species named after them in fact David I knew you have quite a number already named after you um it's your birthday so one of the world's foremost dragonfly experts wanted to

Dragonfly Named After...

 And one thing you need to know about dragonflies, one important thing, is that they lay their eggs in fresh water. They need fresh water to breed. They lay the eggs into fresh water. Little larvae hatch out in fresh water. They feed on other little things. They feed on mosquito larvae.

Charles Anderson...

 now that we can lay down the layer by layer let's make the color come from the layers that we dial in the group in Harvard they're making they're taking actually the chitin which is in seafood waste and they use the architecture from the dragonflies wing and they layer it

Creating a Bio-Industrial...

 and keeping our cost of water low. Frogs serve as a source of food for birds, fish, snakes, dragonflies, and even monkeys. When frogs disappear, the food web is disturbed, and other animals can disappear as well. Amphibians are also extremely important in human medicine.

Why are frogs...

 Nobody knew the secret, but high speed shows that a dragonfly can move all four wings in different directions at the same time. And what we learn can lead us to new kinds of robotic flyers that can expand our vision of important and remote places.

Hidden miracles of the...

 them to create the illusion of a continuous moving image because the pages are turning faster than that it brings the animation to life so a dragonfly however this would look completely different the images would

How Do Dragonflies See...

 that were characteristic of the genus Plesiosauria. They used all four of their flippers to swim in a form of underwater flight, similar to the movement of a dragonfly.

Plesiosaurs 101 PIPE...

 dragonflies are undoubtedly one of the natural world's design classics with a superbly adapted body plan and behavior repertoire that has stood the test of time