- And then I'm gonna take my thumb and my forefinger, and I'm going to grab the wings, and pinch them up over the dragonfly's back.

And then I can loosen up the net, and I can pull the dragonfly out to see it.

[gentle music] Now, this is a beauty of a dragonfly, isn't it?

It has those gorgeous green eyes.

They're beautiful, first off.

You know, they come in different colors, and they're iridescent, and they just fly around.

And so they just have a charisma.

And then when you get to know them, you discover all these crazy bits about them.

It's striped like a race car.

- [Narrator] Ami Thompson wants to teach the world about dragonflies because dragonflies are just a really cool mystery that needs to be understood.

- But it likes to live in these streams like this one.

- [Narrator] There are roughly 7,000 species of dragonflies.

- So this is what I study.

This is a baby dragonfly.

And dragonflies actually live, by far, most of their lives underwater as these aquatic nymphs.

In colder environments, they'll live underwater for five, six years before they metamorphose into an adult.

And then they usually do their mating.

Eat, mate, lay eggs, and then die for a few months, or sometimes just a few weeks.

And they are crazy aggressive hunters.

They catch 90% of what they chase.

And this arm on the bottom is called the prementum.

So this arm shoots out lightning fast, grabs food, and then brings it back to the mouth.

- [Man] So when you think, you know, a frog and some other animals do that same thing, this is the- - Yeah, it is.

- [Man] Super fast.

- It is the similar adaptation, a way to get prey that's a little distance away, catch it quickly, and bring it back to the mouth parts.

- [Narrator] Dragonflies haven't changed much in the 325 million years they've been around either perched on a leaf, hovering over a pond, or in the water.

- Anywhere where there's water, you'll find the dragonfly.

And the adults can fly long distance.

Some of them migrate.

They don't have to be near water.

The nymphs have to grow up in water, but once they metamorphose into adults, they can fly nearly anywhere.

In my hand, you can see three baby dragonflies, or three dragonfly nymphs.

And believe it or not, but these are all the same species of dragonflies.

- [Narrator] No matter the species, when dragonflies become adults, the insects can reach speeds of 35 miles per hour in flight up, down, backwards.

Dragonflies can experience g-forces while making a turn that would cause a person to black out.

- They have really unique physiology, unique behaviors.

There's tons of them around.

It's every little aspect of them is a mystery yet to be solved because they're not not that well studied.

You think, "Well, why does it behave this way?

Or why does it look this way?"

And the answer is, "Well we think maybe it's this, but we don't know.

So, go do an experiment."

So they're just full of potential.

[whimsical music] - [Narrator] Thompson's quest to learn more about dragonflies is centered at her lab at North Carolina, Wesley in college.

- [Ami] I am super into this.

It's like, that's what makes it a joy.

- [Narrator] Thompson and her students want to understand why dragonfly nymphs are found in a variety of colors.

- And we began to wonder maybe it's the environment they're in.

Maybe they wanna change color to match the environment that they're in.

- [Narrator] It's well known that dragonfly colorings span the rainbow.

But the color question about dragonfly nymphs appears to have never been asked.

- If they do have this camouflage effect, and if they do, that'd be really cool because it would help them stay away from predators, possibly.

- [Narrator] So, students collected dragonfly nymphs, and they are letting them grow up in containers filled with aquarium rocks of different colors.

Nymphs can undergo between six and 15 molts before emerging as adults.

- And we measured the color before we put them in, and we're letting them grow in the containers for a while and they can shed their skin.

And then we'll test at the end of the experiment to see if they have changed their color or not.

- [Narrator] The colors of the rock and the nymphs are matched to standardized paint colors to set a baseline.

- We have basically, like, paint swatches, and they have number, they're on a number scale.

So we colored the rock.

So we pick which color we think matches the rock the best.

And then we pick the color that matches the nymph a couple days after they ecdys.

So we've been measuring that throughout the whole experiment.

And then at the end, we take all of the color changes, and compare it to the initial color of the rock that we said it was.

- When it molts it's skin, it could be a color brown.

And then the next day it could be a green, maybe a lighter green, a orange, maybe even yellow.

- [Man] Any census so far?

- Well, you it's really not wise for a scientist to say before they run the statistical analysis, but- - [Man] Oh, that's too bad.

Come on.

- But it looks like the smaller nymphs are able to change color more readily than the bigger ones.

So especially in the white and green environments, the small nymphs do, from my visual analysis, appear to be different than their original color, and to be matching their substrate.

- [Narrator] Dragonflies are vital to the environment as predators, especially of mosquitoes, and as prey.

And because dragonflies require stable oxygen levels and clean water, researchers say dragonflies are good indicators of a healthy ecosystem.

- They are ancient.

They have lots of similar characteristics to the versions of them that existed when dinosaurs were around.

They're a little bit smaller, and a little bit more complex, but basically the same.