Mating is a gymnastic affair for dragonflies and damselflies. The male makes sperm at the tip of his abdomen, but his copulatory structure (penis) is higher up. Before mating, a male curves his tail to transfer sperm to his penis. Most males maintain territories to attract females. An attractive territory contains a good site for laying eggs, such as a patch of vegetation sticking out of the water. Once he has a female, the male clutches her with tong-like appendages at the end of his abdomen. In this "tandem" position the pair flies around until they both flex their bodies to bring the male's penis in contact with the tip of her tail. Once fertilized, the female inserts eggs into vegetation or just drops eggs into the water. The male may stand guard, still clutching her or perching nearby, while she lays the eggs. The eggs hatch into aquatic larvae that takes months or years to mature.

An insect has a brain, connected to bundles of nerves (ganglia) in each of its three body segments. Like us, they have sensory nerves that receive information from their environment and send it to the brain. Information comes from many types of touch receptors. Touch-sensitive hairs all over an insect's body are sensitive enough to detect vibrations in the air, such as from an approaching predator. Insect hairs also do chemical detection (chemoreception). Pores at the end of chemoreceptors on mouthparts or other body parts allow odors to reach the nervous system. Insect antennae may have thousands of chemoreceptors, used to detect chemicals in the air (pheromones) emitted by members of the opposite sex. An insect, like us, has a pair of eyes on its head. But, insect eyes are compound, with hundreds or thousands of lenses, together making an image consisting of spots of light, like pixels. An insect's sound receptors are on its legs.