It seems that in the bug world, in order to avoid males who are bothering them for sex, female dragonflies fake their own deaths. You read that correctly. They fall from the sky and lay motionless on the ground until the dude goes away. I’m dying laughing as I write this. (But come on, how many times have you “gone on a long vacation” to avoid that one guy?)

Rassim Khelifa, a zoologist from the University of Zurich, worked in the Swiss Alps for two summers on experiments showing how temperature affects larvae when he noticed the phenomenon. And this is the first time that scientists have seen odonates, the order of carnivorous insects that includes dragonflies and damselflies, feign death as a tactic to avoid mating. (There are only four known instances of animals faking their own deaths: two species of robber fly, the European mantis, and the spider species Pisaura mirabilis.)

In his study, published in the journal Ecology, he wrote:

“…while I was waiting at a pond near Arosa, at about 2,000 meter elevation, I witnessed a dragonfly dive to the ground while being pursued by another dragonfly… the individual that crashed was a female, and that she was lying motionless and upside down on the ground.

Upside down is an atypical posture for a dragonfly. The male hovered above the female for a couple seconds and then left. I expected that the female could be unconscious or even dead after her crash landing, but she surprised me by flying away quickly as I approached. The question arose: Did she just trick that male? Did she fake death to avoid male harassment? If so, this would be the first record of sexual death feigning in odonates.”

His observations also found that the more male competition there was, the more likely female dragonflies would fake their own deaths!

RELATED ARTICLES:

And while it is risky, not being coerced into sex with the mot annoying partner seems to help females live longer and have more offspring.

Well done lady dragonflies. Well done.

Source: Newsweek