Many people find insects to be annoying and irritating . They are constantly swatting them away and spraying the air to get them out of their faces.
But, when you really get to know facts about insects and learn how they operate , there are many interesting and fascinating things that you’ll find out. Some insects do a lot of things that we humans wish we could do .
RELATED STORIES
One of the first insects to be on Earth happens to be the dragonfly.
The dragonfly is about 300 million years old , with a ton of qualities that are rather crazy. For instance, they have a 360-degree vision and can see just about anything.
They can also fly at crazy speeds and in funny directions.
The dragonfly can actually fly in any direction . They can also fly backward, which is truly impressive. Clearly, their crazy eyesight helps them know where they are going at all times.
While humans find them pesky, they actually help the ecosystem.
Dragonflies are incredibly helpful to humans because they eat hundreds of mosquitoes per day—making it less likely that we’ll be bitten up by them in the long run, which is a huge win.
But, our favorite thing about dragonflies happens to be how female dragonflies interact with males.
Let’s face it, even insects get tired of being pestered by the opposite sex when they are not in the mood. As it turns out, female dragonflies are straight up over it. So much so, that they have their own method for doing things.
When female dragonflies are being pursued by males, they play dead.
Rassim Khelifa from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, saw the strange behavior for himself when he was in the Swiss Alps. He saw a female dragonfly literally crash to the ground when being chased by a male.
Being able to fly rather quickly has paid off on their part.
While he observed the dragonflies, 27 out of 31 females he witnessed being harassed by male dragonflies completely hit the ground and pretended to be dead . Many of them were successful, with the male dragonflies flying away and leaving them alone.
Experts say it happens most when harassment is “intense.”
Not all female dragonflies do this on a regular basis. In fact, it really only happens if the mating and harassment are relentless. I mean, we’ve all been there before ladies, right?
Other insects apparently play dead, as well.
Researchers have studied and concluded that male spiders actually play dead in order to improve their chances of mating , oddly enough. The robber fly and mantis also have used the dead technique, as well.
Dragonflies aren’t the only animal or insect out there setting the bar high.
Playing dead is the best reaction, by far, but it turns out that female octopuses are killing the game too. They’ve come up with their own way to deal with pesky males.
In 2015, Australian, Canadian, and US researchers observed how female octopuses react to annoying male advances.
It turns out, that those female octopuses literally throw objects they can find at the males who are bothering them. Females do it almost to ensure that males will steer clear of them and leave them be.
Clearly, humans need to take notes.
All of us ladies have been in a situation where men don’t know how to take “no” for an answer. Maybe it’s about damn time we took a note from the dragonflies and the octopuses and play dead or hit them with a shoe.
