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Miniature Tags Track Dragonflies
celardore writes "BBC News reports about the epic journeys taken by dragonflies searching for warmer climates have been revealed by scientists in the US.
The team, led by researchers from Princeton University, found that the insects are capable of flying up to 85 miles (137 km) in a day.
Each transmitter weighed about a third of a gram and had enough battery life to track an individual for 10 days; but tagging such small creatures is far from easy.
"The challenge is first catching the dragonfly," said Professor Wilcove.
Once caught, each transmitter was attached with a couple of drops of superglue and some eye-lash adhesive."
Dragonflies, meh. I just want a phone that gets a good signal and makes phone calls. Is that too much to ask?
We all hope that this kind of technology will be used only for this kind of purposes and not for Humans.
Such a technology could lead to a 24x7 tracking of persons: where they are and when, at least.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The same transmitters attached to mosquitos lead to a surprising result: each tagged mosquito stayed in the exact same meter squared for all 10 days of the experiment. Scientists are baffled because previous theories postulated that mosquitos were able to travel much longer distances.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
As I began setting up camp late in the afternoon I began to notice first a couple then dozens of giant neon blue and black dragonflies. After I had set up camp I walked a bit closer to the rock bluff above the lake and sat down. There were untold numbers of dragonflies all around me. Most were quite large but there were also smaller ones. After I settled on an outcropping of Canadian Sheild the dragonflies began to settle on rock and plants everywhere. I sat still and watched what was a surreal dance of hovering and slow moving dragonflies move lazily in the late afternoon summer heat.
Needless to say there wasn't a mosquito to be seen or heard. I'd never before seen so many dargonflies and haven't since. Perhaps it was a hatching site, but the numbers were unestimatable. It was more a work of imagination than reality.
Anyone had a similar experience?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
"The study was rumored to be funded through several layers of dummies (because no financially prudent person would fund such a silly-seeming study): Originally, funds may have come from DARPA. When questioned, agency representatives refused to comment on the potential military uses of dragonflies as long-range recon scouting animals carrying larger transmitters with video, infrared or radar transmitting capabilities, yet seemed pleased overall with the results of the study."
Now, to confirm, all we need to see is some obscure article on enhancing the flight characteristics of dragonflies... laden, though not with coconuts...
We now return you to your tin-foil hats-making, already in progress...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
I wonder how far these insects can fly when not burdened with an electronic tag. Or a coconut. African dragonflies, I mean.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Science. Love it.
Still, 1/3 of a gram transmitter. That 100 gram cellphone ain't all that hot now is it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well the fact that these dragonflies are having to search for warmer climates are a sure sign that global warming is not happening!
Well, the trick is to swing your net and come up *behind* them. Once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad. Especially if you have many targets to choose from, not just one stupid one that decides that it would prefer to stay 20' off the ground and on the other side of the stream from you (been there...).
:(
That said, you're quite right. You have to swing the net *fast* and you don't want to miss. If anything, I'd usually end up killing them by splatting the body rather than the wings, but yeah
The right kind of netting helps some with the wings, too. They buzz around like hell, so you really have to pinch the wings quickly to stop them from hurting themselves, but that's easy enough to do once you have them bagged. Fortunately, the wings are reasonably robust, so they're not hurt merely by holding them between your fingers (unlike with butterflies, where the scales rub off so quickly, so much so that you cannot handle them at all--sphynx moths are terrible in this regard, because they hover like dragonflies do and beat their wings just as fast).
Does the combination of superglue and eye-lash adhesive have magical properties that makes it easy to work with?
Or did the researchers have another study going on to compare the two?
Or, did they only use the superglue on the male dragonflys and the eye-lash adhesive on the female dragonflys?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I for one, welcome our new dragonfly overlords!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
If the dragonfly migration paths are similar to that of songbirds, it would argue that there are certain environmental selectors for "good" migration routes for many of the migratory species. That could be a useful argument for trying to preserve the rapidly-vanishing lands along migration corridors. Songbirds are definitely declining in number due to habitat loss on their migration routes and that does not bode well for other species that might follow similar paths.