Over 3,000 species of ancient insects with upright wings and long tails. The nymphs live in clean fresh water, sometimes for years. The adults cannot feed and usually live from minutes to a day or two, emerging in huge synchronised hatches to mate.
Quick answers
What is it?Insect
Carnivore?No, herbivore
Dangerous?No
Domesticated?No
Awake when?Day & night
Hibernates?No
Kept as a pet?No
Do people eat it?In places
Eaten in several cultures: pressed into kungu cakes in Malawi, collected around Lake Victoria, and eaten in parts of China and Japan.
At a glance
Found inWorldwide
HabitatRivers & lakes
ColoursBrown, Cream
SizeTiny
LengthNymphs 3–30 mm when ready to emerge
Legs6
Covered inExoskeleton
Lives inblooms
Lives forUp to a few years (1–2 days as an adult)
Can fly
Can swim
Lays eggs
In the wild
- Where it lives
- Clean fresh water on every continent except Antarctica, though often absent from oceanic islands.
- What it eats
- Nymphs mostly eat algae, diatoms and detritus, and a few hunt small insect larvae. Adults do not feed at all.
Did you know
Can spend years as a nymph but often less than a day as an adult, which cannot eat.
Adult females of Dolania americana live for less than five minutes.
They are the only insects that moult again after they already have working wings.
Often confused with
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