Comment by wink

Comment by wink 5 days ago

4 replies

View on Hacker News

> That was a big surprise to Christofer Brothers, who studies dragonflies and damselflies at UC Davis. “Before this talk, I was under the impression they avoided contact with the water outside of females laying their eggs.”

Not to throw any shade, but this sounds... weird? I mean, missing that they do something you can only see with a high speed camera? OK. But missing that they dip into the water? Would you not at least have watched them for a couple hours if you are "studying" them? At a university?

Oh, I study data structures but I've never measured the access time of a HashMap. Am I being too harsh?

thoroughburro 5 days ago

Yes. The behavior in question is not easy to observe.

Reply View 2 replies
  • wink 5 days ago

    > About once every 10 minutes, a dragonfly dunks its body in the water

    ... and you see the water splashing in the video, with the ripples being visible for a bit.

    Again, I was not talking about the rotations, just the dragonflies touching/immersing in the water. I just find it incredible no one watched them for 20 minutes at a time apparently?

    Reply View 1 reply
    • thoroughburro 4 days ago

      Given that it is utterly obvious that “no one watched them for 20 minutes at a time” is false, you should accept that this is not as simple as you imagine as a naive layman.

      You may well be curious why it wasn’t noticed sooner, but no specialist will inform you when your approach to them is “So, are you just an idiot compared to me, a random nobody who has thought about your field for all of two minutes?” ;)

      Reply View 0 replies