Dragonflies have been darting through the sky for hundreds of millions of years, and scientists just discovered they have been doing it while seeing a color that no other insect on earth can detect, and that finding could have remarkable implications for medicine. Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan found that dragonflies possess a specialized visual protein allowing them to detect extremely deep red light, pushing right up to the edge of the near-infrared range, a sensitivity that scientists describe as one of the most powerful ever recorded in any insect species. What surprised the research team even more was how the dragonfly achieved this ability: through the exact same molecular mechanism that humans and other mammals evolved completely independently to see red light themselves. Two species separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution arrived at the identical biological solution entirely on their own.
Scientists believe dragonflies developed this extraordinary vision to spot mates mid-flight by picking up subtle differences in how their bodies reflect light, differences that are completely invisible to the human eye and to every other insect around them. Beyond the discovery itself, the team found they could engineer a modified version of the dragonfly’s visual protein that responds to even longer wavelengths of light, pushing its sensitivity further into the near-infrared range. This matters greatly for medicine because near-infrared light can penetrate deep into living tissue, and a protein that responds to it could allow doctors to activate and study cells far deeper inside the body than any current tools can reliably reach. The study, published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, opens a promising new door for a medical field called optogenetics, and researchers say the humble dragonfly may have just handed science one of its most exciting new tools in years.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260409101059.htm
