Inspired by an incident which happened to me a couple of years ago. I was out walking my dog on a warm day when I saw two dragonflies flying around each other, probably engaged in a mating dance, however what happened next was unexpected. Both dragonflies stopped their ‘dance’ and one turned in mid-air to look at me, it flew directly over and halted about an inch from my face, I stepped backwards and it followed me before turning and flying back to the other dragonfly, they turned towards each other for a few seconds before both turning in unison back towards me, looking for all the world like they were having a conversation (Hey, you need to look at this, its really weird), the second dragonfly then flew across and hovered inches from my face at eye-level gradually coming closer and closer, I was determined not to flinch but involuntarily did so when I thought the frigging thing was going to land on my nose! It then flew back to its mate and both flew off together.
The whole incident made me wonder just how smart dragonflies are because it seemed as if they were as curious about me as I was about them and you don’t really expect such behaviour from insects.
I don’t know about smarts but they do have pretty good vision, being hunters that capture prey in flight. You were an interesting object in the environment, that’s probably it.
Insects are pretty dumb; their behaviors are based on stimulus-response and have extremely limited memory.
I read once about the behavior of a certain insect that would forage for food, bring the food up to the threshold of its lair, inspect its lair to make sure it was ok, then bring the food inside. Scientists could move the food a small ways away from the threshold, and the insect would restart the whole process; I believe they got one to repeat the ritual dozens of times.
Well, their vision may be good at locating targets but it isn’t “good” in a more general sense. They have compound eyes which are simply not a very good design. I recall an estimate I read in one of Richard Darwin’s books on evolution that in order for a compound eye to equal the performance of a human eyeball it would need to be something like four feet across.
This behaviour is well known with dragonflies - getting up in your face - and in Norwegian the name for them is actually “Øyenstikkere” which literally means “Eyestabbers.” (Or, in the north, “øresnik” - “ear sneaks” - from the belief that they’ll lay their eggs in your ears.)
I think Dawkins would be enormously pleased by this typo.
Re the Norwegian name for dragonflies: I spent a pleasantly stoned afternoon once with dragonflies hovering around at face level. Very beautiful, very intricate creatures, don’t seem that fussed about being close to large mammals.
BTW, should you want to CATCH a dragonfly, I remember a little factoid from an “insect collecting” phase as a child. If you see one resting on a weed, and it flies off, just wait at that spot for a few minutes. They will often return to same resting place after a short interval.
All in all, since they’re perfectly harmless (to people - if you happen to be a mosquito it’s another story), and kind of interesting to watch, I can’t get terribly worked up about any “inquisitive” behavior.
Interesting question. I was wondering something similar after a dragonfly repeatedly flew at me, got swatted (but not hit, it was faster than my hand), flew away and watched me from a distance, then flew back at me several times in the span of a few minutes last summer.
I have a phobia about insects/bugs/spiders getting on my head, since a few times now I’ve discovered a bee, a spider, and a centipede taking cover in my hair. Hence the swatting.
Dragonflies are short lived, I’ve heard lifespans listed between a day and a month. Like cicadas they spend the majority of their lives in a nymph/pupa stage. There’s really not much use for super intelligence when your whole purpose of being at that stage is to find other dragonflies to screw in between meals.
Maybe, but it’s a lot harder to detect a small object in motion, analyze if it’s worth pursuing, calculate how to intersect the moving and possibly evading object in 3 dimensions and catch it than just looking at a tasty bug sitting motionless on a leaf while hovering. And I’m sure they can do that, too.
