Active Motion Camouflage
"The trick involves very precise flight control and positional sensing..." (1)
One Summer, dragonflies hovered and swooped in the heated air like jeweled machines. More than I had ever seen before. They were ancient and high-tech seeming at the same time. Beautiful. Vaguely symbolic in my imagery array, dragonflies fascinate like fireflies. One ephemeral...the other washed with immortality.
Two things I learned yesterday: that dragonflies are the world's oldest airborne predators -- and that the males can make their prey think that they are standing still, while they are actually moving. Apparently, they do this by adjusting their flight so that their image always appears in the same spot on the retinas of their prey.
How marvelously cool.
Sounds a lot like time, to me. When you're in it, focused on it, it doesn't seem to move. The hours have their own active motion camouflage. Time, like a dragonfly, is perfectly focused. So often invisible, or seemingly motionless. You only realize, later, that it has been zooming right along.
"From the outside of everything. To the inside of you." (2)
(1) © 2003 Reuters Limited.
(2) "New Frontier", Counting Crows.
Comments
Cool entry John. I like the comparison to time standing still.
I love dragonflies. Definatly a highly evolved species.
Posted by: Carol | June 5, 2003 9:43 PM
Thanks Carol! The dragonfly thing was definitely the coolest thing I've read this week. :-)
Posted by: John | June 5, 2003 10:39 PM
nice colors for the site. I am buying 1250 stock in it!
Posted by: Jale | June 8, 2003 6:32 PM
Ah, thanks Jale!
Posted by: John | June 10, 2003 12:09 AM
Very nice, I am amazingly impressed by dragonflies. They are the real masters of flight. They do this superbly cool things like, hovering, flying backwards, landing upside down, flying sideways and many other things. Scientists have yet not understood the aerodynamics of their flight. The day that happens we will see the versatile flying machines in the air.
Posted by: anupgpillai | June 18, 2004 12:01 PM