It uses the syringe for another purpose too. When it pleases it can shoot out the water with great force, and thus propel itself quite a distance.
By means of the syringe it can leap through the water faster than it can move by its slow-going legs.
Mollie wants to know if we can see the syringe.
No, it is inside the body.
But there is a kind of dragon fly that has a pair of gills outside, at the end of the abdomen, instead of the syringe inside.
The best I can do is to show you a picture of one. Some day we may find it in the pond.
Those two feather-like parts at the tail end are gills.
Yes, John, it can propel itself through the water by rowing, as it were, with these gills.
There are some species of dragon fly larvæ that swim by moving the tip of the abdomen from side to side, as a fish moves its body when it swims.