It's Alive Animals

The blue wings of this dragonfly may be surprisingly alive

Adults go to great lengths to shine blue

morpho dragonfly

STRANGER WINGS  Among natural blues, the wings of this morpho dragonfly create color in a really complicated way.

GREG LASLEY/INATURALIST.ORG (CC BY-NC 4.0)

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

An adult insect wing is basically dead.

So what in the world were tiny respiratory channels doing in a wing membrane of a morpho dragonfly?

Rhainer Guillermo Ferreira was so jolted by a scanning electron microscope image showing what looked like skinny, branching tracheal tubes in a morpho wing that he called in another entomologist for a second opinion.