My daughter is studying dragonflies for school. We've been reading about them nearly every night (the Deschutes County library has a lot of books on dragonflies, turns out); after the reading, she writes or illustrates a page in "My Insect Report." One day last week she wrote this:
Interesting facts about my insect
It can't fly in cold wether.
It livs most of it's life in water.
It can fly baqurds.
The best fact of all!
It evolvd 300 million years ago – be for dinosaurs! It was as big as a crow!
She's been telling everybody about this. Before dinosaurs! As big as a crow! People are always exactly as amazed as she; they act out being dive-bombed by a giant dragonfly, covering their heads with their arms and ducking. And then they'll say (if they know anything about dragonflies at all): Imagine how big mosquitoes must have been back then!
So. As part of the report, she and I are making a crow-sized dragonfly. It has old socks stuffed with plastic bags for its abdomen and head, pipe cleaners for legs and – well, we're not sure yet how to make the wings. She thinks we should cut them out of cardboard, but I thought we could reshape wire hangers and stretch cheesecloth over them. The wire is heavy, though.
Ideas?
There is such a creature as the Himalayan Relict Dragonfly. It is not as streamlined a flier as the dragonflies we know; it's slow and rather uncoordinated, they say. It is more nymph than dragonfly, in fact, living for up to nine years as an aquatic insect before making its final transformation.
Scientists originally theorized that this Relict Dragonfly was a predecessor of the dragonflies we know, but now they say that the two have a common ancestor; the Relict and our dragonflies began to separate around the time the Himalayas uplifted.
Around the time the Himalayas* uplifted**!
That makes me feel young, as a species.
(If I had to do a report, I'd call that the best fact of all.)
*About the Himalayas, Wikipedia says, "Topographically, the belt has many superlatives." I love that.
**Beginning roughly 55 million years ago.
2 comments:
Lots of cool facts! I didn't know that dragonflies could fly baqurds!
I love that you are making a model. I like the idea of wire for the wings. If you use hangers, I'd recommend using pliers to bend and shape them--for heavy wire, I've used a pair of pliers in each hand. You could probably also double up pipe cleaners instead of the hanger wire. As for wing material, do you have any old nylons or sheer tights? I think it would be easier to get something stretchy and sheer to stay in place over the wires.
I made a praying mantis once with wire and gauze wings - worked well. And I hope you two have now made a fine model. Hoping for a photo.
Love the dragonfly facts. Love your daughter's enthusiasm, too.
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