The Search for the Dragon(fly) Warrior

One of the questions I was asked in my most recent adoption was what I would do if I were not a physicist. I’m pretty sure I would do something in science, and I have an interest in evolution and paleontology. The stumbling block to going in that direction was the squishy part of biology — when I was in school, I was pretty sure animal dissection would start by making me weak-in-the-knees, followed by me throwing up, and I had no desire to test that prediction. Consequently, I haven’t studied a whole lot of biology, including entomology.

But dragonflies are pretty fascinating. They don’t fall under the “bugs to be avoided” category — not gross house-invaders, nor do they want to sting me. I had no idea that they flap their sets of wings out of phase, though it makes sense (if it were in phase, why not just have a bigger wing?) But I have some shots where it looks like maybe the two sets are at slight different frequencies, so the phase changes. I also didn’t realize how much they glide when they fly. And the flapping is low enough in frequency that it shows up well on a high-speed camera — a much lower pitch than many other insects.

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It’s also really hard to pan a camera to follow them. I think I saw six distinct species; these were the biggest and flew high, while a few others tended to hug the ground, and yet others I only saw in the woods.

6 thoughts on “The Search for the Dragon(fly) Warrior

  1. I agree – dragonflies = awesome. We have tons down here. They say it is the fastest insect in the world. Eats mosquitoes. What else could you want?

  2. Completely awesome. Do you have a lot of dragonflies that just fly around constantly like that? I feel like most of the ones I see are hovering, with only short bursts of zooming around.

  3. The ones I saw hovering were in poor lighting in the woods, and the shots didn’t turn out too well. Too many shadows. The big ones that are in the video flew around a lot, without much hovering.

    Cicada season is coming up. I don’t know if this is a big year for us, but if it is, that should be interesting.

  4. Great video! I’ve tried getting some video of them before but failed miserably. But I do watch them regularly and always fascinated by them. Also like u I was amazed at how often they glide – it makes sense, but in watching them with the naked eye one would never know that they even glide!

  5. What video camera did you use and at what speed?
    Is there a chance I can get a HR copy of your dragonfly shots?

  6. It’s a Casio Exilim EX-FH20; these are at 420 fps. There is no higher-res version — this is it — so you might as well just use a program to download the file from youtube (my youtube account is swansontea. You can subscribe for when I upload more videos). I’ve used keepvid with some success: http://keepvid.com/

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