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Nature's Wonders Dragonflies & Damselflies - A Ken Gilliland Creation at HiveWire 3D
and on Halloween... while Dragonflies are one of the most beloved insects in the world (along with butterflies and ladybugs), they do have their darker side.
Their order,
Odonata, which means the “toothed one” in Greek, refers to dismembering their prey adeptly with their mandibles and eating them while still in the air.
They are often referred to as sinister element in European folklore.
Its common name the dragonfly, was named because some believed it to be the witches’ animal, Some believed that Satan sent it on earth to cause chaos and confusion, to calling it, Ear Cutter, Devil’s Needle, Adderbolt, and worst of all, the
Horse Stinger. The name, Horse Stinger, comes from the misinformed observation that horses that were kicking and stamping around usually had a few dragonflies hovering around them. Fact remains though, that the dragonflies could well have been helping the horse by eating some of the parasitic insects that were doing the actual ‘horse stinging’.
The Welsh call the dragonfly
the snake’s servant and think they follow snakes and stitch up their wounds…and continuing with the misnomers, they are called eye pokers and eye snatchers in Portugal.
In Sweden, folklore suggests that we dragonflies come around to check for bad souls - to weigh souls to be more ‘accurate’ and elsewhere, believed to sneak up to children who tell lies and also adults who curse and scold, to stitch up their eyes, mouth, and ears respectively.
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