Meganeura

The Meganeura is one of the creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved.

Behavior
Meganeura are usual neutral creatures, although they like to feast on nearby corpses, attacking those who get near their feast including other creatures and survivors. This can be troublesome when hunting as you may suddenly find a swarm of hungry Meganeura trying to forcefully claim your kill. A swarm that finishes devouring a corpse will attack any nearby survivor. However, when touching water, Meganeura will not attack, even if you attack them back. Likewise, walking on water while being attacked will cause the Meganeura to almost instantly lose interest in you. However, take note that the Meganeura in the Swamp Cave are outliers and will attack players and tames unprovoked.

Appearance
The Meganeura is a "small" insect, or at least small for ARK standards, with an elongated body, 2 large compound eyes, 2 pairs of wings, and 3 pairs of legs; the whole makeup of the Meganeura greatly resembles that of dragonflies, though the Meganeura is in fact a griffin fly, an extinct group of insects.

Drops
Cementing Paste is only obtainable with a Beelzebufo

Combat
This section describes how to fight against the Meganeura.

General
On their own, Meganeuras are neutral unless provoked. However, Meganeuras are scavengers and they will swarm freshly killed corpses and will become aggressive if you try to harvest the corpse while they feed. If you don't want to fight, back away from swarmed corpses so the Meganeuras don't attack you. Take care when entering the swamps as they contain large numbers of Meganeuras that can and will kill higher level dinos alarmingly fast if one does not escape or fight back sufficiently.

Strategy
Attacking one Meganeura will cause other Meganeuras in the area to become hostile, and they have quite the high aggro range. If you kill one in one hit however, the others won't attack you. If they swarm, they will generally target your head. Using a / and stabbing wildly into the air can usually take them out fairly quickly. If you happen to have a tamed dinosaur who's attack has a large Area of Effect, like the, or   (Beelzebufos deal 10 times more damage to Meganeuras, so you can easily take out entire swarms of them).

Weaponry
It is a better idea to use shorter ranged melee weapons that have a far reach (spears, pikes); they can be hard to hit with ranged weapons like bows.

Dangers
A Meganeura bite will poison you and reduce your, making it harder to escape if you get swarmed. Their tendency to swarm and aggro additional Meganeuras also makes it likely that you'll be fighting much more than you had wanted. while this at first this seems rather miniscule in Swarms this effect's duration will stack preventing sprinting and creatures like the from climbing to safety for a while.

A swarm of Meganeuras can easily cripple and take down weaker flyers like a thanks to their stamina draining attacks and decent damage. Be wary if you land one near a swarm of them.

Weakness
The biggest weakness of the Meganeura is its low. It usually only takes a few hits to kill even a high level one and any decently sized tame with good AOE can destroy a swarm with little hindrance.

Roles

 * Cementing Paste Collection Source: Meganeura like other arthropods can yield when killed. The Meganeura is also one of the best candidates for efficiently farming large amounts of when a  is used, as they are fairly common and are attracted to corpses and recently killed prey, allowing them to be concentrated and harvested in one place.
 * Swarming Tactics: Though almost always impractical, they can be quite the nuisance if attracted to a certain area by a corpse, becoming aggressive.
 * Poison: Being attacked by a Meganeura will inflict the Stamina Drained! debuff which will slowly drain the player’s stamina. This debuff can also be inflicted upon tamed creatures.
 * Beginner Chitin Source: Before going for creatures that have more chitin, like the Titanomyrma packs, Pulmonoscorpius, or Arthropluera, Meganeuras and Trilobite s is a good source of chitin because they are easily and safely killed with a bow and arrow (or literally any long range weapons) and can be safely harvested for their chitin for beginners if they are boh comfortable in walking to the swamps to find the meganeuras and are trying to make while being uncomfortable with killing Triceratops or Carbonemys for keratin or the hostiles chitin creatures (read: Titanomyrma packs, Pulmonoscorpius, or Arthropluera) during their beginnings.

Notes/Trivia

 * Dossier revealed on 06/10/2015
 * It is one of four creatures currently able to be harvested by for, the others being the , , and.
 * Meganeuras don't pose much of a threat on their own, but in numbers, they will become much more aggressive.
 * Most griffinflies were not significantly larger than modern dragonflies, though the largest, including Meganeura, could reach wingspans of up to 70 cm (28 in). It is controversial among the scientific community as to exactly how these insects got to such sizes, even though the largest griffinflies were still small compared to other giant arthropods of the Carboniferous and Permian. Theories that attempt to explain such gigantism range from lack of predators, to increased atmospheric oxygen and/or pressure providing more growth, to protection against said over pressurization and/or oxygenation. All said theories could potentially have been at play.
 * Likely based on the Giant Griffinfly, Meganeura Monyi.
 * Meganeura were once thought to be an early ancestor of all dragonflies, and its order named Protoodonatoptera. However, both have been reclassified under the Odonatoptera superorder and split into seperate orders, with dragonflies and damselflies in the Odonata order and griffinflies in the Meganisoptera order. Griffinflies are now considered ancient close cousins to the modern dragonfly group but not their direct ancestors.
 * Like the other insects in Ark, the Meganeura has adapted to eating dead things, most of the other insects eat while Meganeura will fancy a whole corpse/dead body. However, it should noted that it is more likely that Meganeura hunted most of the time, as stated in Helena's dossier.
 * Though it is rarely seen, the Meganeura can indeed land and walk on the ground, though usually this is brief.
 * Despite how swift dragonflies are and most griffinflies probably were, the Ark Meganeura is a tad slow and can be outrun by most creatures and survivors.