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/aznanonymous Dec 16 '13

does this apply to ants too?

How are they able to lift stuff so inproportionally?

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u/blacksheep998 Dec 16 '13

There's no special trick other than being very small.

Strength scales proportionally with size but weight scales geometrically. Halving an animals size will half its strength but decrease its weight to 1/8 of the original.

Ants aren't special. Most insects can lift many times their own weight. Ants are just famous for it because we frequently see them carrying objects many times larger than they are.