More art

Bill Hacker wbh at conducive.org
Thu Mar 31 20:33:04 PST 2005


Zera William Holladay wrote:

Sorry, I know you've all seen a lot of DF art but here's another one:

http://icarus.uic.edu/~zholla1/hackers.gif

-Zera
Well............

In the interest of anatomical accuracy.....
a 'proper' Dragonfly..
- has two sets of wings, up to nearly a meter in span at one time in the 
fossil record.

- has *much* larger phased-array compound eyes (12,000+receptors each), 
as it is a 'sight hunter'

- has no 'stinger'.   The gadgetry at the aft-end is, among other 
things, for clinging to its mate, and/or dipping sperm out of a pocket 
on its main body and conveying it to a similar location on said mate, 
(who does what, with which, and to whom, up to the proclivities of the 
players......as ever was..), and an excercise, BTW, that they can 
accomplish while in flight.  Eat 'yer heart out, KC-135 refueling crews ;-)

- has a folded-under, split, extensible lower jaw with gripping prongs 
that resembles a cross betwwen an Ingersoll-Rand 1BU continuous mining 
machine and a 6000-Anthony rough-terrain forklift. With this it catches 
its prey (in midair), draws the meal back to the rest of the mouth, and 
eats it from the top downward.

A serious 'Mean Mary Jean' - death on other insects.  One thing a 
Dragonfly *cannot* do is 'kick ass'.  Legs are too weak - suited to 
landing or clinging to plant stalks only.

Bill





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