Not Tonight, I’m Dead, How Some Female Dragon Flies Fake Sudden Death To Avoid Males

By Mayukh Saha / Truth Theory

While it is a survival strategy of most insects to fake their own death in order to escape their predators, dragonflies seem a little different. Dragonflies do the same playacting so as to get rid of some over-enthusiastic male dragonflies, as reported by the magazine New Scientist.

Almost hilariously, women all over the Animal world seem to have the same experiences when it comes to males – they can’t seem to understand and this has been experienced by the moorland hawker Dragonfly too. They would suddenly fake plummet to its own death to get away from some Romeo-Esque dragonfly.

In a survey by the Ecological Society of America, it has been reported that the instances of a female Dragonfly faking their own death is not as rare as it was thought to be. Almost 27 species of female dragonflies out of 31 species have tried the same tactic when it comes to evading male dragonflies. Out of which 21 happened successfully. There were instances where males acted a bit disgusting – they would not even mind copulating with a dead dragonfly.

The lead researcher at the University of Zurich, Rassim Khelifa, believes that the female Dragonfly is simply being extremely cunning. When the male dragonflies go away, the females would rise, brush themselves clean and go their way. And to be honest, sex for the moorland hawker Dragonfly isn’t exactly easy as continuous sex might actually destroy their reproductive tract.

This entire event is quite surprising. Add to that, this phenomenon was never observed before during experiments.

The animal world sounds quite glorious, doesn’t it?

Image credit: Maciej Olszewski