Facts About Dragonflies

Facts About Dragonflies – A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera. Below you’ll find more interesting Facts About Dragonflies.

Facts About Dragonflies

• A dragonfly’s scientific name is Odonta, which comes from the words “tooth-jawed” because the entomologist (insect scientist), Johann Christian Fabricius, who named them studied the dragonflies’ mouths in order to distinguish the different species. Now their wings are studied as well to classify dragonflies. (fact – other names for dragonflies around the world are water dipper in England, old glassy in China, and the ancient Celts called dragonflies big needle of wings.)
• From the time a dragonfly egg hatches, it can live anywhere from six months to six years, but only about two months as an actual dragonfly. (Facts About Dragonflies, most of the time spent is as a nymph in the water before the dragonfly’s metamorphosis into a full grown dragonfly.)
• A dragonfly’s eyes have about 30,000 lenses and a dragonfly can see all the way around it, but they don’t see details very well. (fact, a human eye only has one lens and sees better than a dragonfly, but only to the front and side of them.)
• There are about 5,000 different species of dragonflies all over the world except in Antarctica. 450 of the species can be found in the United States and about 80 species in British Columbia. (fact, most of the 5,000 species are found in remote, tropical areas.)
• There were huge dinosaur dragonflies that lived 300 million years ago. (fact – the largest fossil found had a 2 ½ foot wingspan, and currently there are dragonflies in Costa Rica that measure 7 ½ inches across the wings.)
• A dragonfly is a very strong and good flyer, and can fly at speeds of up to 36 miles per hour. (fact, but not all dragonflies are that fast – one was clocked at this speed in Australia)
• A bee flaps its wings about 300 times per second, but a dragonfly flaps its wings at only about 30 beats per second. (Facts About Dragonflies, dragonflies have two sets of wings so they don’t have to beat them as much to fly.)