A scene straight from the biblical book of Exodus played out on an American beach last weekend, sending vacationers fleeing before a swarm of ravenous insects.
The invasion was caught on camera, creating an instant viral video.
People relaxing at Rhode Island‘s Misquamicut State Beach on Saturday had no indication that the day was about to take a radical turn, but things soon started to change as millions of dragonflies showed up.
“One minute everything was calm,” beachgoer Nicole Taylor told WFSB. “The next minute I saw the most dragonflies I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“It lasted for like 3 minutes, and then they were gone. It was a very strange experience.”
Videos of the insect swarm have been posted across social media, gaining millions of total views. Some beachgoers in the the videos can be seen being driven to flee in the face of the dragonflies.
Would you stay or go? ⛱️🤔⁉️ Dragonflies swarmed a busy Rhode Island beach on Saturday — you can hear children screaming as they flew past. https://t.co/xSc1cvImf9 pic.twitter.com/KnhPNf3UUI
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) July 28, 2024
“It was weird,” vacationer Paula Bellavance told WFSB. “It was like there was a couple, and then there was more and then it was just like they were coming from the ocean, and we’re just trying to process, ‘Wow, what is going on,’ and you look up, and there’s thousands in the air and all around you.”
Clouds of dragonflies were also reported at the nearby Newport Folk Festival, according to the Providence Journal.
Have you ever seen a swam of insects this size?
While the appearance of this swarm might bring to mind visions of the ten plagues cast upon ancient Egypt, dragonflies play a beneficial and thankless role in the food chain.
Perhaps most relevant to people is the insect’s hunger for mosquitos.
Scientists are still struggling to understand why the unusually large swarm appeared in the first place.
“What I suspect is happening,” Rhode Island Natural History Survey’s Executive Director David Gregg told the Providence Journal, “is a combination of a good year for this species, a particularly big population, then a decline in their resources, and it triggers them to move and try to find a better place to be.”
Another dragonfly expert asserted the flying insects were using the coastline as a visual landmark while traveling between habitats, perhaps being pushed to a low altitude after encountering a storm.
Rhode Island is not the only state where the dragonfly swarm made an appearance — the insects were also seen in neighboring Connecticut over the weekend.
Associate scientist Gale Ridge of Connecticut’s Agricultural Experiment Station speculated that warm oceanic temperatures acting alongside the wind may have made the swarm advance on the beach.
“These are green donna dragonflies that are commuting possibly from Canada, and they may have been pushed on shore by the wind,” Ridge told WFSB.
Ridge stated the dragonflies could simply be stopping by the shoreline for a meal of mosquitos before resuming travel.
Whatever the case may be, the millions of insects made for an impressive sight.
