Dragonfly
Don’t let the blue background fool you: that dragonfly is green, and that means Spyro only has one hit point left! To everyone who gets that reference: “Hi Sean!”
This picture comes from who else but Scott Roche. I believe it is the same dragonfly as this one from last week. In this picture, however, the dragonfly has given up trying to eat Scott and has decided to move on to petty theft. Unfortunately, the water bottle he’s trying to steal is also way bigger than he is. This dragonfly has some serious size compensation issues, that much is apparent.
This viewing angle affords us the ability to classify this bug’s gender: it’s a boy. The blue spots at the end of the tail are an optical illusion. They aren’t there at all: you’re looking at the blue webbing of the chair through an open space. The black lines surrounding this open space are the anal appendages¹ or “claspers”: the male uses these to grab the female’s head during mating. Have you ever seen a pair of dragonflies zip past while linked together? You were looking at a male and a female mating. The one out in front, of course, would be the male. They have be the ones doing the driving—it’s a guy thing for them too. They also won’t stop and ask for directions.
Thanks are again in order for Scott. Great photo!
¹ I’m sorry. I tried hard to find you a polite-sounding Greek or latin word for them, but the English term is more common. I suppose there’s nothing stopping us making up our own Greek or latin word, like proctodactyli² or stercomani³.
² “butt fingers”.
³ “poop handlers”.
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
tceisele said,
March 3, 2008 @ 8:52 am
I particularly like that he’s getting these pictures of *live* dragonflies. I found a specimen very similar to this one last summer that had evidently died a natural death beside the road[1], and all the bright colors had become dull and unexceptional. This was one of the reasons I didn’t post any pictures of it[2]. The ones I see in insect collections usually don’t look all that colorful, either.
[1] It was completely undamaged. I guess it had just gotten old, landed somewhere convenient, and shuffled off this mortal coil.
[2] The other reason was that I left it on the kitchen table while I went to get the camera, and when I came back, one of the cats was *chewing the wings off*. Why did I ever think having cats was a good idea?
Scott said,
March 3, 2008 @ 10:38 am
It is indeed the same dragonfly. I don’t have a fetish I promise. Good to know about the claspers/poop handlers/butt fingers. Everything sounds classier in Latin.
Things are getting warmer around here so more bugs a comin’.
JFargo said,
March 3, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
Awesome photo, Scott! I wish I had your skills.
I also wish I had cool bugs like that to take photos of! Warmer weather coming this way too, so here’s hoping we’ll get to see a little Delaware wildlife soon. I’m new here, so I have NO idea what I’m in for.
Kazriko said,
March 4, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Ohh, a Spyro reference!
Time to go scorch a couple sheep, frogs, or whatnot so he can gulp down some butterflies.
They did a much better job of fleshing out their sidekicks in Ratchet and Clank.
Pages tagged "dragonfly" said,
March 4, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
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