This week instead of focusing on a specific insect I wanted to talk about some Physiology, that is how the body works. Not all of it of course, but just some things that I personally find incredibly interesting.  Support the show -> https://www.patreon.com/user?u=46499107  IG: https://www.instagram.com/insects4fun/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085443614825 Email: [email protected]   Music supported by Lofi Girl with featured artists: HM Surf, Blue Wednesday and S N U G.    Transcript:    Welcome to Episode 55 of insects for fun! The entomology based podcast hosted by me, your not so local entomologist. Today I will go into the topic of Insect Physiology. Basically how the bodies of insects work, and the different ways insects can hear, smell, taste and feel.    Let’s get to the basics, an Insect has three body segments, A head, thorax, and abdomen. I believe I mentioned some of this already as well in my episode about bugs versus insects, but we’ll be going into a lot more detail today! Insects also have six legs which is where the class name Insecta comes from. Now what makes insects and all arthropods really unique is that they have an exoskeleton which simply means they wear their bones on the outside which is the complete opposite of other animals.  Now because they wear their bones on the outside they also happen to have strange methods of hearing, tasting, and smelling. They also don’t have the same internal structure that mammals or other animals do!    Let’s start with the inside of an insect. They have three guts, the foregut, midgut, and hindgut. Each section serves a specific function for digesting and absorbing different parts of their food. The foregut also known as the crop, is where the food gets broken down into smaller pieces. Of course some insects are fluid feeders like mosquitos for example and in those situations the foregut prepares the liquid into something easier to digest and absorb. The foregut in mosquitoes contain blood thinners which prevent their meals from getting sticky and hard.    The midgut is the area where most of the nutrients get absorbed into the body. Enzymes are released to digest the transported food particles into absorbable nutrients for cells. The food is actually wrapped up in a special membrane which is believed to protect an insect's innards from pathogens that may be present within the food.    Not everything gets absorbed through the midgut though. The hindgut is actually where salts, and water are absorbed from the leftover waste and is incredibly important for maintaining a balance of internal fluids. This is also the landing place for nitrogenous waste which gets evacuated from the insects “blood” through a series of small tubes.    Insects don’t have a closed circulatory system the same way we do, which is to say they don’t have a heart that pumps blood through veins and arteries to their organs. The system of an insect is known as an open system in which the insect’s blood, referred to as hemolymph flows freely through the body, bathing all the organs. They do have something similar to a heart which is called an ostia and this is a long tube that runs from the head down to the abdomen but it actually pumps hemolymph from the back to the front. The reason is because as the hemolymph moves its way down the body it can relay messages from the head region.   Insects do have a brain, but they also have multiple bundles of neurons throughout their bodies that can send messages in response to stimuli like touch, smell and taste. The bundles of neurons are called ganglions. That being said the head does contain three very important ganglions that together form what we would think of as a brain which is again why the ostia pumps hemolymph up there to flow back down.    So now we know that insects have a brain, bundles of neurons called ganglia, an esophagus that leads to three different guts, and an open circula