Dragonfly is one of the most ancient animals that exist now on the planet. The first of them appeared long before the era of dinosaurs. Scientists say that dragonflies became the first animals to master airspace. In this case for a multi-million-dollar history of dragonflies have not changed. Because of this, they are sometimes called “primitive” insects. However, this is unfair. Even without significant improvements in evolution, the dragonfly is an amazing insect, an almost perfect predator.
Dragonfly is a predator. It feeds on insects, and feeds very actively. The dragonfly is very greedy: in an hour she can catch and eat up to fifty flies! Naturally, in order to provide herself with so much food, she must be a very skilled hunter. Dragonfly is one of the fastest insects in the world. It can develop a speed of more than a hundred kilometers per hour, while it can deftly maneuver in flight.
But the most interesting feature of the dragonfly is the structure of the eyes. These are the most complex eyes in the world of insects. On the head of a dragonfly, you can easily see two huge rainbow eyes. However, in reality there are not two, but twenty-eight thousand. Tiny eyes (called facets) are grouped on the head of a dragonfly in two spherical eyes. Each of the facets sees a small “piece” of the picture, which for a dragonfly is something like a mosaic.
Facets do not allow the dragonfly to see into the distance. She is very short-sighted: she can clearly see the object at a distance of not more than two meters. But she admirably recognizes the movement, which provides her with the highest reaction speed, so necessary in flight. In addition, the two “eyes” formed from the facets have a convex spherical shape. Thanks to this, the dragonfly sees almost everything that happens from below, from above, from the side, from the front and from behind.
