Not Tonight, I'm Dead – How Female Dragonflies Avoid Male Harassment

Female dragonflies who do not wish to mate will play dead, falling from the sky and resting on the ground stationary until the annoying male leaves them alone, a study from the University of Zurich found, Newsweek stated.  

The conduct was witnessed in the Swiss Alps, where male dragonflies are more in number than females. In 86% of circumstances, females would fall to the ground when males came near. Those that continue to fly “were all intercepted by a male.”

“Of the 27 motionless females, 21 (77.7%) were successful in deceiving the coercive male,” University of Zurich researcher Rassim Khelifa said.

Although it is a dangerous tactic, faking death seems to help females live longer and produce more descendants by evading coercion. Khelifa further observed that when males are not present females lay eggs in more open spaces, leading him to reason they lay eggs in thick vegetation to dodge male attention.
 

The tactic is not unique-robber flies fake their own deaths, so do the mantis and the spider kinds Pisaura mirabilis. Males from these species play dead after mating so as not to be eaten. This is, though, the first time the approach was witnessed in dragonflies.

Death and mating have an uncomfortable relation in the wild. National Geographic reported that Pacific salmons die after breeding; mother Stegodyphus lineatus spiders let their offspring to consume them after they are born; and male orb weavers of the Argiope genus die after they insert their second sex organ into the females of that species.