Dragonflies may be ridiculously quick in the air, but new research shows that may be because they are able to predict their prey's movements to efficiently hunt them down.

According to the Washington Post, authors of a study published in the journal Nature discovered the dragonfly is constantly producing a comprehensive system of neurological calculations when tracking its prey. Scientists previously pointed to sharp reflexes as the reason for their success.

"This highlights the role that internal models play in letting these creatures construct such a complex behavior," study lead author Anthony Leonardo, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus, said in a press release. "It starts to reshape our view of the neural underpinnings of this behavior."

For their study, the researchers watched the dragonfly hunt actual prey and then led them on with false targets to track their flight patterns. The dragonfly tried to approach what it was hunting from below and would always keep its focus through the predictive method.

"You don't need a spectacularly complicated model to guess where the prey will be a short time in the future," Leonardo said. "But how do you maneuver your body to reach the point of contact?

"Those turns were driven by the dragonfly's internal representation of its body and the knowledge that it has to rotate its body and line it up to the prey's flight path in a particular way," he said. "That tells us what the dragonfly sees and how its body moves."

To illustrate how the dragonfly's tracking of its prey works, imagine trying to film a wild animal. It is not hard to react to where the animal goes, but would be nearly impossible to move the camera in tandem with the animal.

"At the end of the chase, the fly makes a basket out its legs and the prey drops into it," Leonardo said. "It gives the dragonfly a very elegant combination of predicted model-driven control and the original reactive control."