Insects will grow huge if the earth has plenty of oxygen

Giant bugs will crawl on the ground or hover in the sky if the earth has more oxygen.

(Photo: spin2see.com) Nearly 300 million years ago, giant insects also roamed and flapped their wings on the planet, with dragonflies with large wingspan of hawks - about 76 cm. At that time, oxygen accounted for 35% of the air. Today, we can only breathe oxygen to 21% of the atmosphere.

Not all insects are huge at the time, but about 10% are big enough to be considered giants, insect biologist Alexander Kaiser at Midwestern University in Arizona, USA, said.

To find out if more oxygen-rich air has created larger insects, Kaiser and colleagues calculated whether the current amount of air has limited insect size. They compared four large beetle species from 0.25 cm to 3.8 cm.

Specifically, the researchers looked at the size of the trachea in insects, where the air flow into and out of the body. If humans have a trachea, insects have a system that binds together and releases the atmosphere.

When the beetle gets bigger, X-rays show that their windpipe is also larger and superior to the possibility of a 20% body size. That's because when the beetle increases in size, their windpipe must be even larger to accommodate the extra oxygen needed for the body.

To a certain extent, the windpipe cannot grow more than a certain size. Based on calculations, the team found that modern beetles cannot grow more than 15 centimeters. That's the size of the largest known beetles today, like the Titanic long horns in South America.

If the atmosphere in the past has more oxygen, the windpipe may be narrower and still circulate enough air for larger insects. This leads to a much larger animal size, the researchers concluded.

MT