Dragonfly - Simple English Wikipedia

# Dragonfly

### From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

A dragonfly

A dragonfly is a kind of insect. Dragonflies belong to the order Odonata and the class Insecta. The family is True bugs. The dragonfly is a predator. It hunts other organisms for food. This can easily be seen looking at its large claw-like pinchers.

You can recognize a dragonfly nymph by its teardrop shaped abdomen. It also has very large eyes.

There are about 5,300 species of dragonflies around the world. It is an insect that has two pairs of thick and long wings.

It lives near fresh water (usually slow moving) and swamps. It spends its childhood in water. Dragonflies are not harmful to people, though are smart hunters. They can fly up to 60 km/h (about 38mph) and live for 2-5 years average.

For four years, dragonflies are in a young time when they live under the water. For one year they are an adult dragonfly.

Dragonflies have been around for 300 million years. In old prehistoric times dragonflies had wings that were over two feet wide.

Dragonflies can eat water insects as larvae, but as they grow older they eat tadpoles, small fish (really small fish), and even their own species.

They come in many diffrent colours such as green, blue, red, and even purple.

The dragon fly insects are the biggest group of arthropods. Their body structure includes a head, thorax, and abdomen.On the head there are two antanae.

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Category: Insects

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