Beautiful demoiselle
The beautiful demoiselle is a large damselfly that lives by cool, clear streams. The boy has a shiny blue-green body and dark, metallic blue wings. The girl is metallic green with see-through brown wings that have a little white spot near the tip.
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Fun facts
A young boy has brown wings. They only turn shiny blue as he gets older.
A mother can lay up to 300 eggs on floating plants, and she often climbs right under the water to do it.
Its babies are thin like sticks, with long legs and strong claws to hold on to plants in the current.
The babies grow in the water for two whole years before they become damselflies.
It needs clean water with plenty of oxygen, so seeing one is a good sign that a stream is healthy.
Most asked questions about Beautiful demoiselle
?What is the difference between a damselfly and a dragonfly?
Damselflies like the beautiful demoiselle are usually slimmer, and their front and back wings look alike.
?Where can I see a beautiful demoiselle?
By cool, clean, fast-flowing streams, often near woods, in summer.
?How big is a beautiful demoiselle?
It is about 5 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Calopteryx virgo
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Dragonflies and damselflies
- Family
- Calopterygidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Odonata > Calopterygidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Beautiful demoiselle (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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