The humble dragonfly, long a symbol of lazy summer days, has a secret: it’s actually one of the most skilled predators on the planet. Harmless to humans, dragonflies are absolutely lethal to other insects, missing only one prey in twenty. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratory want to learn what makes the flying insect such a talented killer in the hopes of someday improving missile guidance systems.

Dragonflies are more than 300 million years old, and their ancestors were some of the first insects to develop wings . That’s apparently been plenty of time to hone their hunting skills to a fine edge.

Now, C4ISRNet writes , government researchers are trying to unlock the insect’s ancient secrets. Researchers believe that the dragonfly, which has a reaction time of just 50 milliseconds, actually hunts by instinct instead of “thinking” about how to respond to prey. If hunting is indeed hardwired to the flying bug, it could be possible to replicate how it hunts with electronics and software—and place it all in the brain of a missile.

Scientists at Sandia are exploring using an artificial neural network to figure out how dragonflies hunt, and then apply it to missile capabilities. Dragonflies are not smart animals and they don’t have very big brains, so whatever gives them such outstanding hunting skills could be surprisingly simple. If scientists can figure out how to copy the dragonfly’s hunting skills with technology, the result would be cheaper, lighter, deadlier missiles than ever before.

The push to learn from insect brains is part of a broader effort by defense scientists to look at the animal kingdom for time-tested ways of doing things, from underwater drones that swim like sharks to tiny drones that fly like hummingbirds .



Source: C4ISRNet

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