Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/147

 AND MEANS OF LIVING

along the sides of the body (Fig. 7o), and from these trunks are iven off branches into each body segment and into the head, which go to the alimentary canal, the heart, the nervous system, the muscles, and to all the other organs, where they break up into finer branches that

terminate in minute end tubes going practically to every cell of the body. Many insects breathe by regular movements of expansion and contrac- tion of the under surface of the abdo- men, but experimenters have not yet agreed as to whether the air goes in and out of the same spiracles or whether it enters one set and is ex- pelled through another. It is probable that the fresh air goes into the smaller tracheal branches principally by gas diffusion, for some insects make no perceptible respiratory movements. The actual exchange of oxygen from the air and carbon dioxide from the tissues takes place through the rhin walls of the minute end tubes of the tracheae. Since these tubes lie in im- mediate contact with the cell surfaces the gases do not have to go far in order to reach their destinations, and the insect has little need of an oxygen carrier in its blood--its whole body, practically, is a lung. And yet some investigations have made it appear likely that the insect blood does con- tain an oxygen carrier that functions in a manner similar to that of the hemoglobin of vertebrate blood, though the importance of oxygen transportation in insect physiology has

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Fe. 7 . Respirator l' system of a eaterpillar. The external breathing apertures, or spiracles (S/, S/), along the sides of the body open into lateral tracheal trunks (a, a), which are connected crosswise by transverse tubes (b, b) and give off mi- nutely branching tra- cheae into all parts of the head (H) and body

INSECTS