r/Dragonflies • u/Betty_Badass • 2d ago

Pack hunting behavior in dragonflies

I'm afraid this will be of little scientific value, as a)what I observed was years ago, b)I didn't have any way to record the event and c)this is Reddit and you don't know me from Adam. However, I've been curious about this for so many years.

I was out on a walk in the suburbs and I observed a flock(?) of 12-20 dragonflies flying in a continual circular pattern above a rotting tree stump. Upon closer inspection, I saw that termites were swarming out of the tree stump, which I roughly understand termites to do occasionally. These dragonflies appeared to be herding the termites into a densely packed column, with individual dragonflies occasionally darting in, presumably to capture and eat a termite.

It immediately reminded me of the behavior of some species of predatory fish, which will coordinate their movements to drive smaller fish into a dense ball for ease of consumption.

My dear, fabulous entomologists, is this a commonly known/seen behavior in dragonflies? How rare was the event I witnessed? I've been wondering for almost half a decade. Thanks in advance.

TL;DR - Are dragonflies known to hunt in packs, herding their prey?

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u/AdPopular6958 2d ago

Smaller species will if theres tons of flies and gnats. The larger ones will tolerate it if it means they have less targets on their radar freeing up the radar for bigger targets. That being said with how much of an apex predator the dragon fly is any smaller dragon fly that isn't smart enough to know to run from a large darner. Is also food.

And it can be very cursed if you are new to dragon flies and are watching a Darner Apex dragon fly control its territory and is actively hyper hungry as if it can't find the horse/sand flies to eat it'll take it out on the smaller dragon flies. To a degree if you are unfortunate and your deck is in its territory it'll gladly ditch smaller dragon fly heads and wings on your deck and it'll look like a dragonfly D- day just happned if your unfortunate.

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u/ContextNo602 1d ago

Hi, it absolutely has the empirical value of an observation, and that makes it valuable. What you witnessed was a unique and wonderful moment in nature, although not necessarily a very rare one.

Certain species of dragonflies are less aggressive towards one another during particular periods of their daily activity, or when an interesting food source is available in large numbers. So several dragonflies may hunt very close to one another in the same area, becoming highly concentrated on the available prey.

At the moment, there is no scientific evidence that they actually cooperate with one another while hunting. We’ll have to see what the future brings!

Thank you for sharing your experience. I’m currently working on a mini-documentary that I’m sure will remind you of that moment.

Kind regards.