A new video shows an enormous wave of dragonflies swarming the Misquamicut State Beach in Rhode Island and sparking panic and confusion among beachgoers over the weekend.
According to WCVB-TV, the massive swarm of dragonflies was recorded on Saturday at the Misquamicut State Beach in Rhode Island. The video, which was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by WCBV-TV Boston, shows people screaming, laughing, and expressing their confusion over the strange swarm of dragonflies.
Stephanie Martin, who shared the video with WCVB-TV, said, “I was enjoying a nice day at Misquamicut State Beach until we endured a dragonfly apocalypse.” Richard Sontag, who also shared footage from the dragonfly swarm, described the scene as an “invasion.”
Helene Dombrowski, who also witnessed the scene at Misquamicut Beach, told The Boston Globe, “I’ve never seen anything like that. Maybe a few dozen at a time of dragonflies, but never in that amount.” Meanwhile, Mark Stickney, another witness of the dragonfly swarm, described the experience as “surreal” and told CBS News that there must have been “hundreds of thousands of dragonflies.”
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In another video shared on Twitter, one of the individuals on the beach can be heard saying, “I’m kind of scared,” before asking, “Is the world ending?”
The Daily Caller reported that the insects recorded in the videos on social media appear to be Common Green Darner dragonflies. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Common Green Darner dragonfly typically reproduces in July and August and prefers “still or very slow-moving fresh water with lots of aquatic vegetation, such as lakes and ponds and rivers and streams.”
According to CBS News, Evan LaCross, a Department of Environmental Management spokesman, noted that dragonflies typically swarm open spaces, such as beaches, fields, and freshwater sources.
“The swarms of dragonflies that the public observed throughout Rhode Island last weekend are most likely dragonflies dispersing in search of suitable habitat or in response to high population densities,” LaCross stated. “It’s impossible to know where they are coming from, but if surface water is drying up or if dragonfly population densities are high, they are known to disperse in search of new suitable habitat.”
