Dragonflies migrate like birds

Photo: LiveScience

These tiny creatures have migrated since ancient times, but scientists still do not know much about the starting point of most of them and the target they aim for.

" We were as confused as Aristotle 2000 years ago ," said biologist Martin Wikelski, referring to the falsely asserted claim by the famous Greek philosopher that the wintering bird in the swamps winter.

Now, Wikelski has a better understanding of Aristotle, at least at one point.

In a recent study, as a team leader at Princeton, he and his colleagues found dragonflies and songbirds with the same habit of flying away. This proves that migratory behavior is not so complicated and may have started 100 million years earlier than previously conjectured.

The team attached radio transmitters to the wings of 14 green metallic dragonflies, and monitored radio signals on an airplane and from handheld devices on the ground.

" They migrate just like birds - in other words, birds actually migrate in the way of insects ," Wikelski said.

Although dragonflies appear on the earth before birds 140 million years (according to fossil data), they also suffer from similar wind and temperature rules. Both postponed flying on high wind days and only left after two days of cold weather. They even use the same markers on the ground and stay at the same beaches.

" We also see other similarities, allowing us to wonder how these migration rules have formed on animals in the history of the earth ," Wikelski said.

T. An