Sensei told me an interesting story about dragonflies once:

One thing Japan is known for is its dragonflies. There are like thirty-six species of dragonflies in Japan, and most are active across the archipelago. Their decisive dominance over the landscape brought rise to the study of these magnificent creatures, which are now known to have the design of a warrior.

Interesting things to note about dragonflies: They can hover, and can move in all directions--except reverse. So they can't retreat. They never "sit". Instead, they only perch, and even then they can only do so on pointed stems and branches. They can capture something nearly three times their size and eat it and, when hunting, are so precise in their movements that they usually only have to move once to strike down their prey.

This brought a manner of mysticism to the Japanese battlefield. Usually during morning battles, when the samurai congregated and prepared to fight, dragonflies could be seen flying about overhead.

The yari (spear) and katana (sword), along with several other weapons that the samurai used, were pointed, so if you looked above the dawn fog at the array of weaponry just catching the morning light , you'd see dragonflies perched on the tips of the weapons.

Such images gave rise to the belief that the dragonflies were fallen spirits reborn, guiding the way of battle.

So maybe there's something to these dragonflies, eh?