Blue dasher
The blue dasher is a small dragonfly that lives near ponds. The male is bright blue, with a yellow striped chest and shiny green eyes. The female is brown and yellow striped and has red eyes.
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Fun facts
It can eat hundreds of insects every day, including lots of mosquitoes.
It sits very still on a perch and waits. When an insect comes close, it darts out and grabs it.
Its name longipennis means long wings, but its wings are not really longer than its cousins' wings.
At night it sleeps up in the trees.
Big males chase smaller males away from the best pond spots.
Most asked questions about Blue dasher
?What does the blue dasher eat?
Flying insects like mosquitoes, flies and moths. It can eat hundreds in a day.
?How big is a blue dasher?
It is about 2.5 to 4.3 centimetres long.
?Can a blue dasher sting?
No. Dragonflies have no sting and are harmless to people.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pachydiplax longipennis
- Group
- Dragonflies and damselflies
- Family
- Libellulidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Odonata > Libellulidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Blue dasher (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Lea Maimone. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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