Bees don't have lungs.

So if I understand you correctly, if I remove my lungs, I’m a bee? My aunt had lung cancer, so they’ll probably kill me, anyway. I’ll report back on the results.
- No because you’re likely too big (no offense) :(
  I think insects have little holes all over their bodies, in which air gets inside by itself through some physics shenanigans. It doesn’t need to be actively sucked in like with lungs, it just happens because they’re so small.
  This method doesn’t scale up though since if you’re bigger, you need more air, and having little holes all over your body won’t cut it. Thats when you know you need lungs, and that’s why you don’t see insects the size of a dog these days (thankfully).
  There used to be times in the Earth’s history (Carboniferous) where the air’s composition was different though, and since it had more oxygen in it, insects could grow a lot larger.
  
  Fun fact: Cutaneous respiration (aka "Skin breathing") is something we humans do too. But it accounts only for 1% to 2% of our oxygen input.
  However, the cornea of our eyes doesn't have its own blood vessels to supply it. Therefore, it relies on direct gas exchange with the environment—in other words, skin respiration.
  Our eyes breath like bees.
  
  Adding to this, the holes (spiracles) connect to the tracheae, which connect to air sacs. While respiration is almost entirely passive in smaller species, larger species actually force air through the system to aid the otherwise passive process.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiratory_system_of_insects
  Side note: Spiders have book lungs. They're not insects, but like insects, they are arthropods.
  
  So theoretically if we terraformed the Earth we would be free to genetically engineer humans to survive without lungs?
  
  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it but the movie Mimic had bugs that had grown to the size of a human and taken on a vaguely human form in order to hunt us.
  The movie used the reasoning that the bugs had developed basic lungs which enabled them to grow past the limits of their usual breathing apparatus.
  No point to make here, I just remember it being cool that they put a small amount of thought into why the bugs could grow to human proportions.
- Yeah, and if you pluck a chicken, it will be a human, because it's featherless and stands on two legs.
  
  But what came first, the human or the egg?
  
  Nah-ah, that makes it a dinosaur!
  
  Diogenes my goat
- That is almost how it works, but to really become a bee you'll have to turn the lungs into wings. Good luck. I'm looking forward to seeing the result.
  
  [Lung flapping sounds]
- If you like reading, maybe a half-way solution could be achieved with book lungs like a spider.
  
  Non-insect arthropods FTW!
- Then, when your spouse hugs you, they’ll have beauty in their eye.
  
  Bee holder
- left wiggle, right wiggle, left wiggle, buzz
  WHAT! MY MOTHER WAS A SAINT!
- My Aunt Bee had lung cancer

And, for the most part, humans' lungs don't have bees!
I somehow forgot about bees not having lungs. I knew some other small things didn't.
- What's that? Human lungs don't have bees?!
  A large influx of bees ought to put a stop to that!
- Speak for yourself
  
  I find that hard to beelieve
- Most invertebrates have no internal air sac breathing organ. Arachnids kinda do, and I'm seeing something about semi-aquatic snails, but direct diffusion is pretty efficient at that scale.
  
  Axolotls have them despite not needing them because they can live just fine without ever inhaling air for their entire life. But they sometimes do it for fun and then blow out bubbles.

Beekeepers intentionally use smoke to make bees docile during collection time, transfers, etc
- However, what I've heard from a beekeeper is that the smoke triggers a flight response in them (from fire) so they consume honey ready to flee, and that's actual what makes them docile/drowsy.
  
  You're telling me the bees get the munchies when they smoke...
  
  Pretty shitty instinct if it means they end up sleeping instead of fleeing.

This is (fortunately) why there's a maximum size on insects. The environment is less oxygen rich today than in the eras of giant insects in the past. They reach a size where oxygen can't penetrate deeply enough onto their bodies.
- It's all based on a very fundamental mathematical law: if you increase the size of something, the volume increases with the third power while the surface area increases with the second power. An insect twice as large would be 8x as heavy and need 8x as much oxygen but 4x as much surface area.
  That's also the reason why insects are as strong as they are. The strength of a muscle scales primarily with the cross section area of it, which again scales with the second power. So if you'd increase the weight of an ant by a factor 10,000,000 (e.g. 5mg to 50kg), the expected strength would increase by 10,000,000^(2/3) ≈ 46,400. If it could lift 10x it's weight at the original size, it could now only lift about 4.6% of it's weight
  
  Square Cube Law
  
  Reminds me of how the damage to roads scales with the weight of the vehicle to the 4th power, so someone driving a 6000lb pickup does 16x more damage to roads than a 3000lb sedan
- maybe once I have money for hobbies, but I really want to make oxygen rich terrariums, and selectively breed tarantulas to see if I can make them larger.
  
  No!
  
  This is giving Island of Dr. Moreau
  
  As long as you leave the centipedes out of it
  
  And a separate tank for Scorpions to fight them, we'll make a killing
- On lungless insects. If they develop to be larger they will get lungs!
  
  As long as they mutate it
- Yeah giant insects would be utterly terrifying (and deadly).

Insects don't have lungs. It also means their potential size is directly limited by the oxygen content in the air.
Which is why we don't see cat sized insects roaming around.
- Which is why you don't see cat sized insects roaming around, I live next to a tarantula trail and some of them fuckers get BIG.
  
  Spiders aren't insects. Though like them, they don't have lungs! Not ones like ours, anyway.
  
  tarantulas do indeed have lungs though
  
  Wait… tarantula trails are a thing?
  
  Arachnids are not insects though.
- Related is this awesome video discussing dinosaur breathing
  https://youtu.be/WuMHfWSyoGI
  
  that was great! thanks!

Huh, the Greek hero Spiracles saved the bees
- TIL
- Obviously, the Greek hero Spiracles also rhymes with the bees

Hold on, wait a minute, pause. There are people who think that bugs have lungs?
- To be fair, while bugs and other insects don't have lungs, some arthropods do. The differences among arthropods, insects and bugs aren't exactly common knowledge.
  
  some have book-lungs not true lungs. Only us fish have "true" lungs
  edit: this thread turned into nerd-heaven. i love it!
  
  Usually not lungs as they exist in mammals, though.
- It's funny that this is biology in 4th grade and half the people here are shocked
- I didn't think bees had lungs. I also didn't think bees didn't have lungs...
- I’m less bothered by that person not knowing and way more bothered by them just being so confidently incorrect. Doesn’t take long to just look it up yourself. Unless the whole post was an educational setup?

Hunh. TIL.
- Not just bees, it's true of all insects.
  Consequently, the amount of oxygen in the air determines how big bugs can grow. Get too big, and the oxygen can't diffuse into the body fast enough. This even shows up in the fossil records, with larger bugs being found alongside evidence of eras that had more oxygen in the atmosphere.
  
  They aren't insects, but most arachnids have book lungs, which are basically a pocket full of air gills.
  
  How much was the oxygen and where has it gone since then?

It's what limits their size. If insects had lungs, they could get larger. 300 million years ago, when the oxygen content in the atmosphere was temporarily higher, there were huge dragonflies with 75 cm wingspan (2.5 ft).
- In the original Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton, one of the animals they've cloned are these giant dragonflies. Its only one line in the book (Tim, one if the kids, sees one fly by and recalls reading about them) but it caught my attention as just straight impossible. I remember thinking, "Unless you're somehow controlling the oxygen level of the air around this entire island, there's no way that bug can't breathe."

Well that's a Christmas spiracle
- Just laughed aloud in a café, thanks for that

they don't have circulatory systems either they've basically just pushing things through themselves and tryna make it work
- Pedant here. They absolutely do have circulatory systems. They have what's known as an open circulatory system, whereas we have a closed circulatory system.

"I've been trying to quit smoking. I want to take better care of my spiracles"

Wait until this person hears about fish.

Like most others I have not read the article. But someone please answer me this:
If the bees fell asleep, then why didn't the fire kill them? I can accept that insects don't have lungs, I mean some people are doing well without hearts... but am I supposed to accept that bees are also immune to fire damage?
- The bees were on a different lower down roof from the main roof (which is the one that burned). The article notes that bee wax melts at 70C and they didn't see any of that under the hives, so they know temperatures stayed below that. So the bees were likely only exposed to some smoke and maybe some slightly elevated temperatures.
- Put simply smoke doesn't have to be hot. Smoke is just unburnt fuel caused by a process called offgassing (solid turning to a gas).
  An example of cooled down smoke is a fire that starts in a well sealed room. It burns through as much fuel as possible, and while the solids are hot they turn into gas, however, due to a lack of oxygen, you don't necessarily see combustion. So then the fire snuffs itself out and what you are left with is a cooling smoke.
  So let's say that the fire is on an upper floor. Heat goes up, cold goes down. So as smoke travels through a building it cools, and may eventually sink towards the ground or a lower level (this can be especially possible in a building as large as a cathedral) smoke sinks and interacts with bees at a "manageable temperature".
  Tldr: smoke isn't always hot. The bees are happy.

don't beekeepers use smoke or some such?
- Yup. It simulates a forest fire and encourages them to gorge themselves on honey and leave the hive. They get less protective of the hive (because they think it is doomed) which makes it easier to work. They will check back in under an hour to see if the hive made it, and if so, will regurgitate the honey back and continue on with their day.
  
  Bees are so fricking cool.
  
  They stay in the hive if it's not hot iirc
  
  This sounds strange. You really don't want to make them abandon the hive. You want to disrupt the hive as little as possible.
- Yea tobacco smoke I think but want to say they were being stopped for that n9t sure.
  
  I don't believe they'd use tobacco, as nicotine is especially toxic to insects (and has a long history of being used as an insecticide).
  Beekeepers burn paper, woodchips, or really anything that burns well that they have on hand (that isn't toxic). Source: Have used smoker while handling beehives.

Why doesn't the damaging and hot particulate matter in smoke do any harm to or otherwise clog up their spiracles like it does to the inner lining of lungs? I gather lungs are wet and also very delicate, but if they're directly oxygenating their organs through these spiracles eventually it must get to somewhere wet and delicate for the smoke to get in and potentially harm.
- Maybe something like:
  The spiracles stop working and the insect stops most major movements
  When the air becomes better, the new air fills the spiracles and reinvigorates the insect
  vs
  Humans need to use their muscles to start breathing, or they will require external assistance

am i the only one who notices that this logic makes no sense? it doesnt matter that they have no lungs, they still are susceptible to both heat and airborn toxins, they perform gas exchange. They lived because the heat and smoke were below lethal toxic levels for them.
- this is true,
  but the main takeaway is that some people learned that not all animals have or need lungs.
  as a kid I assumed insect anatomy was like human but insect shaped, learning how alien they are for the first time is a fascinating experience I wish I could relive.
  
  they are indeed very alien it's true. And i suppose, i just dont really want people thinking bees are immune to smoke or other airborne toxin.
  Another fun fact is that bee flight muscles are directly saturated with oxygen and have a power density comparable to helicopters. The whole bee in flight is comparable to a car. Crazy creatures.

I remember the first time I heard bugs dont have lungs. Like wtf? Just no internal ventilation pumping air as needed. Seems wierd but also thx God. They are annoying enough.
- They also have no blood or blood vessels, just a little heart and blood-like stuff splashing around.
  
  I didn't know that either wow. Really freaking and interesting
  
  Bugs are fucking weird.

We should all aspire to be more like bees.

They breathe their own farts. Well.

But that's illegal!
- You wouldn't not have a car.
  You wouldn't not have a handbag.
  You wouldn't not have a television.
  You wouldn't not have lungs.
  Lacking lungs is not having them.
  Not having lungs is against the law.
  Lunglessness, it's a crime.
  
  Lungs, not even once.
  
  Arrest Neelix!

insects are also all upside-down

"fall asleep" sounds like a nice way to say ded
- If they "survived the fire" then they probably dont die from oxygen depravation or at least not quickly.
  
  Temporarily "fall asleep" then.
- To bee, or not to bee, that is the question:
  Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
  The stings and sparrows of outrageous fortune,
  Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
  And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
  No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
  The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
  That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
  Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
  To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the buzz,
  For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
  When we have fluttered off this mortal coil,
  Must give us pause.
  
  Well-done, Hamlet's ghost Jr! 👏👏👏
- Just let the old ticker get some time off.
  
  Honestly i wouldn't mind "fall asleep" now.

Next they're going to tell me that bees don't have hearts
- they actually do, they have a "blood" vessel they use to transfer nutrients back and forth their bodies, no need for oxygen distribution though.

Next you're gonna tell me that plants don't have a neocortex!?