Emperor Dragonfly

• It hunts without landing: it forms a basket with its legs in which it traps mosquitoes, butterflies and other dragonflies, and devours them on the wing.
• Its eyes, with tens of thousands of facets, give it almost spherical vision and an ability to anticipate the prey's trajectory that is studied in robotics and artificial intelligence.
• The female lays her eggs alone, inserting them into floating plant tissue, without the escorting male that accompanies other species.
• It is Europe's largest dragonfly: its body is up to 8 cm long and its wingspan up to 11 cm.
• It hunts in the air and eats in the air: it seizes butterflies, other dragonflies and flies in mid-flight and, if the prey is small, eats it without landing.
• It is among the most effective flying insects in existence. Dragonflies achieve extraordinarily high capture rates because they compute an interception course rather than chasing the prey: they predict where it will be and head for that point.
• It flies at more than 30 km/h and patrols a territory almost incessantly, driving out any other large dragonfly that enters.
• It spends most of its life underwater: the larva is aquatic and predatory for one or two years, and the adult flies for only a few weeks.
• The larva hunts with a mask: a hinged lip it shoots forward in milliseconds to seize tadpoles, insect larvae and crustaceans.
• Since the 1990s its range has been shifting towards northern Europe with the warming climate.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Lagoons, ponds, reservoirs and canals with submerged vegetation

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Anax imperator

Best time: May to August, patrolling over lagoons and ponds