Me and the Dragonfly

Hey you guys, most of you may be wondering whats with me and the dragonfly. Actually its 'thumbi', the Malayalam translation of Dragonfly. It used to me my nickname when I was doing my graduation. It was an accident actually. I was the one who really started it. I don’t know exactly why - may be its my weird imagination - I used to think one of my friends resembled a dragonfly, not the body language, its something about his face. And I started calling him that.. [in the public too]. Unfortunately, I was the only one who could find the resemblance [I told you, it was my weird imagination] and I was the only one calling him that. And it backfired... Soon people started calling me that. May be they thought it suited me well. Later I too 'realized' that it suited [again weird imagination] me. Moreover, I was in search of a nickname for my Internet profiles and I adopted it. Voila!! I became a Dragonfly.

When things got this far, I thought, doing some research on dragonflies may be a good idea... When I was a child, these creatures really amazed me a lot. And checkout what I have found out[Leave the really biological stuff to wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly]. Its really an amazing creature you know...

• Dragonflies have been around 300 million years. One prehistoric fossil had a wingspan of 2 1/2 feet! [Oh! My god!!]
• Dragonfly eyes contain up to 30,000 individual lenses. Human eyes only have one.
• They have two sets of wings. Their front wings can be going up while their backs ones are going down. They only flap their wings at about 30 beats per second (bps) compared to a bee’s 300 bps. [I have heard about bytes per second]
• Excellent and strong fliers, they can loop-the-loop, hover, and fly backwards. [We can use them as a model design some fighter planes, may be the helicopters are designed after them (I guess the aliens do, in most of the alien movies ;))]
• While underwater the dragonfly nymphs (the first stage after hatching) eat mosquito nymphs, tiny fish, and pollywogs. When they have matured to airborne insects, they catch mosquitoes and gnats in mid-air before devouring them. [The Kerala government should really try them to tackle the ever growing mosquito problem]
• There is a British Dragonfly Society which “aims to promote and encourage the study and conservation of dragonflies and their natural habitats, especially in the United Kingdom.” [Wow! Hope they wont include me]

More Funny Facts

• There is an OS named DragonFly [http://www.dragonflybsd.org/index.shtml] which is originally based on FreeBSD.
• They have even released a movie named Dragonfly (2002) [http://www.dragonflymovie.com/]. The listed genre is horror/thriller. Have to watch it.
• There is even a night club which goes by the name Dragonfly [http://www.dragonflynightclub.com/].

And the list goes on.. Now I don’t regret giving myself the name Dragonfly… ;)

Footnote: We need a Dragonfly Day too... ;)