there was a dragonfly trying to run into the windows at my work that got caught in a spider web in the process and it bit me when I was trying to save it >:(
googled to see if it was a bite or a sting and yep! the bloody bastard bit me, how rude.
Dragonflies do bite, and they will bite humans, but only if you catch one and it’s trying to escape or defend itself. And only the largest dragonflies will be able to break your skin anyway.
I was flying my paramotor one morning in Florida. I didn’t notice it at the time, but something caught my eye while editing the video from my helmet camera. It was a dragonfly at somewhere around 1100-1300 ft AGL.
No idea what it was doing up there.
It was thinking the same about you
Something got into its eye.
There’s loads of flying insects up much higher than that, they catch thermals. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/06/01/128389587/look-up-the-billion-bug-highway-you-cant-see
I forgot, though. I was flying in the morning while there had been a lot of low level fog. There were no thermals at the time. The earth hadn’t started heating up yet.
There’s other kinds of updrafts (as I’m sure you know, flying seems like an especially dangerous hobby if you don’t understand wind and airflow) and they can travel quite a long distance in higher currents. There’s a butterfly that gets up to like 20k feet.
Thermals make a lot of sense. But I wonder how much of this is on purpose versus just and accident.
I can easily see an insect getting picked up and carried by an errant gust and then flung up by a strong thermal.
And storms can have nasty thermals.