Eastern Amberwing Admiring His Reflection?

Here's another Eastern Amberwing hovering over water. It made me wonder if, like some birds, dragonflies ever mistake their reflection for a rival and attack it:

  • Birds have much larger brains than dragonflies and are generally considered more intelligent, yet they make this mistake often enough. Why wouldn't dragonflies, with even less gray matter, also make this mistake?
  • Dragonflies will certainly attack rivals. And many species will even attack vaguely similar-looking dragonflies of other species, presumably because they're fooled into thinking that someone looking like themselves must be a rival.
For good or ill, I was unable to find any articles claiming that dragonflies attack their own reflections. Perhaps this is because reflections in water generally don't provide a clear enough reflection to fool a dragonfly.

Or maybe dragonfly combat doesn't typically entail colliding head-on with a rival. Most of the time it looks like dragonfly territory battles consist of somebody chasing and somebody else being chased. If your reflection appears to be your size and never backs away, they decide they'll have to abort the attack, preventing them from crashing into the water.

Or maybe, in this one area, dragonflies are actually smarter than birds?

July 3, 2023 at Sourland Mountain Preserve
Photo 301258364, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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