Dragonflies have excellent
eyesight. Their compound eyes have up to 30,000
facets, each of which is a separate light-sensing
organ or ommatidium, arranged to give nearly a 360°
field of vision, important for taking prey on the
wing, as has done the female shown above.
Odonates are completely harmless
- they do not sting or bite. Indeed, they are
beneficial in the same respect spiders and other
predators are beneficial - they keep the burgeoning
insect population in check. Many of these species
prey on each other; I often see dragonflies with
damsels in their clutches.
Dragonflies are among the most ancient of living
creatures. Fossil records, clearly recognizable as
the ancestors of our present day odonates, go back
to Carboniferous times which means that the insects
were flying more than 300 million years ago,
predating dinosaurs by over 100 million years and
birds by some 150 million.
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