Common Spreadwing

Fascinating facts about the Common Spreadwing

• Male spreadwings spend their entire adult lives guarding a single female — literally. After mating, the male clamps onto her abdomen and doesn't let go for hours or even days, flying in tandem while she lays eggs. This 'mate guarding' ensures his sperm fertilizes every egg she produces, a strategy so effective that some spreadwing pairs stay locked together for over 24 hours without rest.
• At just 3–4 centimetres long, spreadwings hunt like aerial sharpshooters. Their compound eyes give them 360-degree vision, letting them spot a mosquito-sized target mid-flight and intercept it with the precision of a fighter jet — all while their wings beat 30 times per second. A single spreadwing can catch dozens of insects in an hour.
• Spreadwings are time travellers of sorts: they've existed in nearly unchanged form for over 100 million years. Fossils show their ancestors hunted the same way above Cretaceous swamps where dinosaurs roamed. Modern spreadwings are living blueprints of what worked so well evolution barely touched them.
• An adult spreadwing lives only 4–6 weeks in summer, but in that blink they navigate thousands of kilometres. Some populations migrate between continents, driven by instinct older than maps — they follow the sun's angle and magnetic fields to find fresh water hundreds of kilometres away where none existed the year before.
• Spreadwings can breathe underwater as nymphs — and they do so for up to two years. Young spreadwings grow underwater with three-segment gills along their spines, hunting tadpoles and smaller aquatic insects before their wings unfold and they abandon water for air. The moment their wings harden, they never return to water again.

At a glance

About the Common Spreadwing

As the sun casts its warm rays upon the tranquil waters, the Common Spreadwing, with its iridescent blue body and delicate wings, dances across the surface, its slender form weaving in and out of the vegetation with effortless elegance. With a gentle flutter, it alights upon a blade of grass, its wings beating in a slow, hypnotic rhythm as it surveys its surroundings with an unblinking gaze. In this serene and idyllic world, the Common Spreadwing reigns supreme, a tiny, jeweled monarch, its beauty and agility a testament to the wonders of the natural world.

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