Emperor dragonfly

Where does the emperor dragonfly live?

Home: at ponds, ditches and slow rivers.

In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Morocco, South Africa.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: about 7.8 cm long. It weighs about 0 001 kilograms. On the menu: insects.

The story behind it

An emperor dragonfly begins life in water. The egg is pushed into the stem of a pondweed, and the larva that hatches hunts under the surface for one or two years, shooting out a folding lower lip to grab tadpoles and insects. One summer morning it climbs up a reed, its skin splits open, and the winged adult pulls itself out and dries in the sun. From then on it hunts only on the wing over ponds and ditches, and its eyes are extraordinary tools: each one holds close to 24000 separate lenses and covers almost every direction at once. Large dragonflies like this one reach roughly 36 to 54 kilometres an hour and steer each of their four wings on its own, so they can hover, dart sideways and even fly backwards. Studies of hunting dragonflies found that they catch a very high share of the prey they chase, because they aim at the spot where the insect is going to be. The emperor has been spreading north over recent decades and now reaches Denmark, Sweden and Scotland.

Find it on the globe

Emperor dragonfly is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.