Women are known to occasionally use the classic excuse of a headache to avoid “mating,” but female dragonflies take this to a whole other level by playing dead just to avoid males.

Many animals play dead to avoid predators, but female dragonflies have adopted this as a trick to avoid their male partners. Experts say it is common for female dragonflies to just fall to the ground and play dead.

To prove this, a group of researchers with the Ecological Society of America carried out a study. During the study, they looked at 31 dragonflies, and the practice worked in 27 of the cases. For the other four dragonflies, the efforts to play dead failed, as they were still found to be attractive by their male suitors.

Rassim Khelifa, lead researcher from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, was stunned to observe what happened when male dragonflies were no longer present. The experts saw that as soon as they were gone, the females “came to life!”

The reason behind this phenomenon is that the mating process is extremely painful for females of the moorland hawker dragonflies, as it causes permanent damage to their reproductive system. Though Khelifa has been studying dragonflies for a decade, he admitted that he has never seen anything like this.

One fun fact about dragonflies is that they eat mosquitoes, so you definitely want them in your backyard. To find out what specific plants attract dragonflies, check out our story on it here. Also, don’t worry if you see a dead dragonfly on the ground: she’s just pretending so she can avoid her partner!