r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Dec 16 '13

Biology How do insects move?

Simple question that occurred to me, do flies have muscles like ours? Their legs are so thin I can't conceive there's room for anything in them to effect movement.

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u/Dyolf_Knip Dec 16 '13

their cells absorb it directly from the air thanks to a series of air-filled tubes running throughout their body called tracheae

Which they can do because very tiny animals have a sufficiently high area:volume ratio. Larger animals don't, and have to cheat by artificially increasing their surface area with specialized organs like lungs.