SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Rassim Khelifa was standing by a pond in the Swiss Alps collecting insect eggs one day, when he noticed something strange. A dragonfly being hotly pursued by another suddenly took a dive and crashed to the ground, seemingly dead on the spot, before springing back to life and making a grand escape once the coast was clear. The observations that followed confirmed a previously unknown phenomenon – the insect had faked its death to give a wannabe lover the slip [newatlas.com].
...
But the aversion to clingy males doesn't stop there. Khelifa says that when the female is leaving the reproductive site is the time at which they are most vulnerable to coercion from the males, and it is here that they enact their most dramatic repudiative measure. Females were always chased by males after departure in his observations, and 31 out of 35 of those witnessed decided to crash to the ground rather than pair up with a mate.

Of those crashes, 71 percent landed the dragonfly in vegetation like bush or dense grass, and 87 percent – 27 out of 31 – were followed by faked deaths. The females do this by laying motionless upside down. This behavior is atypical of a dragonfly, and is apparently so convincing that it allowed 21 of the 27 to trick the male and escape.

It explains so very much.

Original Submission