{"id":2714,"date":"2009-06-03T03:00:04","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T08:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=2714"},"modified":"2009-06-03T03:00:04","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T08:00:04","slug":"the-search-for-the-dragonfly-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/2714","title":{"rendered":"The Search for the Dragon(fly) Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the questions I was asked in my most recent adoption<\/a> 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

But dragonflies are pretty fascinating. They don’t fall under the “bugs to be avoided” category \u2014 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 \u2014 a much lower pitch than many other insects.<\/p>\n

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video<\/em><\/object><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-science","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}