Free Children

Ms 8 has just been rediscovering an important principle of evolution with regard to dragonfly nymphs: survival of the fattest *g* She collected a dozen or so nymphs from the backyard the other day and put them in one of our observation tanks. Since then, they have been steadily disappearing, until this morning there was only one left. Now she's out collecting more victims for this tiny cannibal.

Thanks to the marvels of television (specifically, Life in the Undergrowth, presented by the amazing Sir David Attenborough) she was able to identify the ugly little things almost instantly, plus she knew what they ate. We couldn't remember if dragonflies live for years as nymphs, but thanks to Google we were able to confirm this. Since the one we have is still very small and can't be more than a couple of weeks old, I guess we probably won't be able to keep it long enough to watch its metamorphosis. But, since Ms 8 "farms" mosquito larvae for her fish, we can try to keep it alive for a while, at any rate. I was interested to read that dragonfly nymphs are also one of the predators of cane toads (in their tadpole state, of course). What useful creatures!

We've been seeing a lot of dragonflies about recently, and imagining what it would be like to co-exist with the huge prehistoric ones with wings which were each as long as a ruler...