Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Dragonfly with Shrunken Head...or a case of Head Ripped Off?

The Update/Correction: Okaaaaayyyyyy.....I was bound and determined to see a shrunken head on this dragonfly. Now I'm not so sure, it's probably a head ripped off. It LOOKS like eyes and mandibles, but I have no good magnifier to put on it. I have found out that a dragonfly's brain is not necessarily in its head. "Ichabod", as I've named it, lived about 6 more days. Then I was reminded of how cockroaches can live without their head for a week. I have found newly emerged dragonflies with some kind of deformation, some not even making it out of the exuvia and dying half way through emergence. I am thoroughly creeped out by this episode. I am also reminded of how badly I need new glasses! Time for some bifocals for the closeup views.

The Original (Erroneous) Post and Observation:
?This morning I was moving plants out onto the patio, and saw what I thought was the body of a dragonfly laying there. I picked it up, thinking to set it aside and examine the remains later, try to identify the species. It looked to me like something had bitten the head off. I had it by the folded wings, and the legs started kicking. This creeped me out a little, and had me wondering how the body could keep moving without the head. I took it upstairs and set it in a container. A couple hours later I came indoors for something, looked at it again, poked at it with my finger. Legs started moving again. Surely it couldn't live that long without a head. So I grabbed it by the wings and peered at it closely. I realized that it wasn't headless, it had a shrunken deformed head, really bizarre looking. What really puzzles me is how the heck the thing managed to live out its larval stage with a shrunken head. The snapper swing-arm jaw must have been working. The mandibles on this adult are pretty much useless, it is doomed to starve to death. It's already weak, or it probably would have flown away while I was photographing it out in the bright sunlight.









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