Are dragonflies mosquito-repellant as claimed by Facebook user?

Claim: A Facebook user, Khailan Arab, posted that dragonflies can eat 100 mosquitoes in a day and, therefore, serve as mosquito repellants.

Verdict: The claim is true. A Google Search Engine churned out dozens of articles extolling the predatory nature of dragonflies in controlling insects in their environment. This includes their ability to eat 100 mosquitoes a day and other insects.

Full Text

Mosquitoes are regarded as the deadliest animal in the world through the spread of Malaria. According to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), there were 249 million cases of malaria in 2022, with 608,000 persons estimated to have died.

Page 11 of the report identified Nigeria as having the highest number of deaths from malaria. Nigeria recorded 26.8% of global deaths from the disease, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (12.3%), Uganda (5.1%), and Mozambique (4.2%).

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Several efforts to eliminate the insect have not yielded much result. A Facebook account, Khailan Arab, claimed in a post that nature gave humans the ability to curtail the presence of mosquitoes through dragonflies.

The post stated that the insect can consume 100 mosquitoes a day and thus could substitute for chemical-laden insecticides.

The post then encouraged individuals to create gardens to attract dragonflies. It attracted 537 likes, 25 comments, and 200 shares on the platform.

DUBAWA decided to investigate the claim to determine its authenticity.

Verification

According to National Geographic, dragonflies are important to the environment as they serve as predators of mosquitoes and prey on birds and fish.

Similarly, a report by the Dragonfly Website described dragonflies as “voracious eaters” that prefer mosquitoes and small flies.

“Each dragonfly can consume up to 100s of mosquitoes per day! They will also eat bees, butterflies, and even other dragonflies.”

An article by Treehugger quoted John Abbott, chief curator and director of Museum Research and Collections at the University of Alabama, saying that dragonflies have a huge appetite for mosquitoes.

“I think it’s fair to say that, given the opportunity, an individual dragonfly could take 100-plus mosquitoes in a day without too much of a problem,” Abbott said in the article.

Speaking with DUBAWA, a Biodiversity expert, Ojonugwa Ekpah, confirmed that the insect can eat 30 to 100 mosquitoes in a day.

“Dragonflies prey on mosquitoes, allowing them to reduce their population. A single dragonfly can eat thirty to hundreds of mosquitoes per day, making them a beneficial insect of ecological importance,” he said.

He added that dragonflies are expert fliers, and if they can’t fly, they tend to starve as they only eat prey they catch while flying.

Conclusion

The claim that dragonflies can eat 100 mosquitoes a day is true. Conservative experts and media articles have confirmed that the insects prey on mosquitoes and, thus, can serve as a natural anti-mosquito repellant.

This report is produced for the DUBAWA 2024 Kwame Karikari Fact-Checking Fellowship in partnership with the Daily Trust Newspaper to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in Nigeria.

An image of a dragonfly. Source: ThoughtCo.