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How Insects Breathe
- amelius 11y agoNicely done. I would love to see such a schematic for fish too.
- Amorymeltzer 11y agoThe circulatory systems of different creatures would be neat to see. Frogs have a weird, sponge-like heart, for example, and plenty of little critters have their entire bodies filled with "blood."
- IceyEC 11y agoOh my god that header is huge
- kqr 11y agoI agree; it didn't work well on a half-small browser window. Either make it even smaller and the header goes away automatically, or open the JavaScript console and run jQuery('.site-header__wrapper').hide()
- aatish 11y agoHi, I'm one of the authors of the piece. Thanks for voting us up here. Hope you like what we're doing, and let us know what you think. If you're looking to read more of our posts, you can follow the blog on twitter @noticingblog (or on RSS). Cheers.
- srikar 11y agoGood to see this piece gaining some traction here. I'm a big fan of your work and Robert's too
- DonHopkins 11y agoI'm holding my breath for next week when you reveal which insect breaths through its butt!
- solutionyogi 11y agoYour website is extremely well done. 1. Great typography. 2. Useful illustrations and 3. A great single column layout, which is easy on the eyes. 4. No annoying popups asking me to subscribe to mailing list. 5. Loads super fast. And to top it all, the actual content is amazing. I am subscribed!
- gPphX 11y ago* your persistent banner is thoughtless * AdBlock : noticing.co##HEADER.site-header
- jamesfisher 11y agoCan a decrease in oxygen from 35% down to 21% really explain a decrease in insect size from eight-and-a-half feet down to just 3 inches? Is there an interesting mathematical relationship here, or are there more factors at work?
- aatish 11y agoGreat question! We spoke to Jon Harrison about this (the scientist we interviewed who studies insect growth & respiration). He says that the truth of the matter is we don't know the answer, it's still a hypothesis that the way insects breathe keep them small. There are other competing explanations, like that it's insect's exoskeletons that constrain their size, or ecological arguments (fewer predators means they can grow bigger). Also spiders don't use trachea to breathe but are also small. One piece of evidence favoring the oxygen hypothesis is research that shows that the fossil record on giant insect size correlates with the oxygen levels in the past, all the way up until birds evolved (and wiped out the ecological niche for giant flying insects!) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/06/04/giant-insects-disappeared-thanks-to-falling-oxygen-levels-and-agile-birds/#.VkYYYWSrRhA http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/06/0... And I'm told there's some more interesting work along these lines that's yet to be published.. so hopefully we should know more soon. Lastly, there's all kinds of experimental work on breeding insects in high oxygen environments, but the results so far aren't universal.. some kinds of insects grow bigger, other's don't. The idea being that oxygen can help the insect grow but can also do damage to cells (in a way similar to aging), so you may need a long while to evolve and adapt to higher oxygen levels.
- CaptSpify 11y ago> Lastly, there's all kinds of experimental work on breeding insects in high oxygen environments, but the results so far aren't universal.. In my completely uneducated experience, it seems like this should be easy to test. Wouldn't it be easy/cheap to over-oxygenate a room, and put bug-farms in there. Is it more complex than that?
- aatish 11y ago
- kalari 11y agoThe Robert Krulwich does your illustrations? Very cool.
- acomjean 11y agoReads like a "Radio Lab" episode... or "brave new world" the short lived ABC science show ...
- krishicks 11y agoI enjoyed the piece. It felt like reading an episode of RadioLab.
- dmalvarado 11y agoSo, are the conclusions based on science? Not speculation or correlation re: size of insects and oxygen density. 35% oxygen to 21% doesn't seem to account for a millipede going from 8 feet to 15in.
- forgotmypassw 11y agoThe oxygen level is only a single factor here, there are probably many more that influenced the size.
- JumpCrisscross 11y agoThere's compelling evidence for a causal link. Hundreds of millions of years ago the atmosphere was much more oxygen-rich than it is today. Insects were also far bigger.
- bhritchie 11y agoIf you enjoyed this, you will probably also like J.B.S Haldane's essay, "On Being the Right Size": http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html
- todd8 11y agoOne reason insects breath differently than we do is that the surface to volume ratio between us is so different. Naturally, volume increases as the cube of the linear dimensions of the organism and the surface area only increases as the square of the dimension. This means that the ratio S/V is directly proportional to the size of the organism. A mouse has a much lower terminal velocity when falling than a human, for example, because they have a higher surface to weight ratio (weight of course is related to volume). Insects are so small that breathing doesn't require the mechanisms that we require because their S/V ratio is so so much larger. On the other hand, desiccation is a much greater problem for insects as is surface tension when wet. For these reasons, insects often have waxy coatings or other means of protecting themselves from drying out or being trapped in by a water drop, but an ant doesn't have to worry about falling out of a tree.
- scott_karana 11y agoSurface/volume ratios are responsible for a lot of other things in nature, like the size/metabolism of mammals compared to the mean temperature of their habitat. (Eg, even within the same species, larger specimens are typically from colder climates) EDIT: go figure, they have a related article: http://noticing.co/on-size-and-metabolism/ http://noticing.co/on-size-and-metabolism/
- aatish 11y agoYup, we also have another post that's specifically about the idea you describe: http://noticing.co/on-size-and-warmth/ http://noticing.co/on-size-and-warmth/
- pvg 11y agoIsn't the article saying the exact opposite? Insects' size (and thus S/V ratio) is in part limited by their breathing mechanism, not the other way round.
- merpnderp 11y agoI guess this explains why you don't need to buy expensive and dangerous wasp spray. A squirt bottle with a thick mixture of soap will kill them in seconds by cutting off their ability to breath.
- Sideshow_Boob 11y agoall the smugness of RadioLab mixed with the talking-down-to-ness of VOX. Thanks, #content internet!
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago> [...] smugness [...] talking-down-to-ness I read the entire thing and I didn't get the impression of either. In fact it even said they didn't know for sure how the passive system works but that this is one theory and then explain it. Seemed like a good read overall and I didn't feel talked down to or anything.
- dang 11y agoPlease don't do this here.
- Broken_Hippo 11y agoI wish at least beginning science and math books had been written like this :)
- transfire 11y agoGiven that there are various ways to breath, I wonder if an artificial means might ever be substantially more efficient than natural lungs?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Camillo 11y agoThis is for children, right? All of this stuff is taught in school.
- ckinnan 11y agoInterestingly, humans breathe in a second way not mentioned in the article. The eye's cornea actually receives its oxygen directly, through the process of diffusion. https://www.quora.com/Do-our-eyes-breathe https://www.quora.com/Do-our-eyes-breathe
- nartz 11y agoWhat a great article!
- tomrod 11y agoThis is incredibly well done. Kudos to the author for the attention to detail and the informative read!
- fezz 11y agoWhat would happen if you bred insects in a 50% oxygen environment?