Who Has The Best Eyes?
Hi Friends,
You ready for this? What is the greatest predator in the world? While wild dogs, big cats, falcons have a success rate around 20%, these track, intercept, capture and devour with a nearly 95% success rate. Total carnivores. Completely recognizable fossil records date to 320 million years ago, although those were ten times the size of today's version. 80% of its brain is devoted to sight and they can see 360 degrees. Guesses? In my homework, this sentence appeared: "In some species, females have evolved behavioral responses such as feigning death to escape the attention of males." Now that's evolution. They exist on every continent except Antarctica. They have names like Scarce Chaser, Scarlet, Emperor, and Azure Hawker. The Globe Skimmers migrate 4,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. So, OK, they fly. They can fly in six directions and can pull 9Gs like an F-16 fighter jet. They can fly without flapping. Treeline Emeralds, Darters, Skimmers... These critters utilize motion camouflage, which has been studied by the military, wherein they approach a moving target with a trajectory that makes them appear as not actually moving in space -- they simply get larger as they approach. Evolution of these creatures has refined them from being good at what they do, 300 million years ago, into a state of near perfection.
Southwestern American tribes consider them "snake doctors" that follow snakes underground to help them heal from injuries. In Asian cultures, they are symbols of rebirth, strength and happiness. Their coloration is often metallic or iridescent -- like hummingbirds or scarab beetles -- as they utilize structural coloration, whereby light is refracted by cellular level crystalline structures or through wavelength interference using matrices of nanochannels. When I was on a month-long canoe trip in northern Quebec, we had a Cree native as a guide. His word for helicopter was the same as his word for dragonflies -- "du whack a du."
Dragonflies are heroic bits of planet Earth. Pretty sure on the next go-round I will be one. Or was one. Their light shifting capability is magical. Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote
"Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew,
A living flash of light he flew."
Friends, be that. A living flash of light. Dropwings, Groundlings, Forktails, Dashers... Summer is here with so many critters awakening to sparkle and laugh at us wingless folks. Take note.
AND go see a band named Goose. They are blazing. And check out the James Turrell exhibition at Mass MOCA, and the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition at MOMA until August. And, naturally, the lakeshore and the beaver pond and that marshy place where nobody goes and the meadow by the abandoned farm and that standing dead tree where the porcupine sleeps and the top of Mount Hunger where the lichen and moss are doing their thing and sunsets over the water and....
You got it.
Go get it.
b mac
P. S. "du whack a du" watchers unite.
P. P. S. Just for the record, birds are half as old as dragonflies.
