STRENGTH OF INSECTS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15160, 22 February 1922, Page 3

STRENGTH OF INSECTS.

POPULAR FALLACIES. SET AT REST BY SCIENCE. At intervals there appear accounts setting forth the prodigious strength of insects. Their muscular force is usually compared with their size by stating, for example, that a flea can leap so many times its own length and that an ant can drag so many times its own weight. Then it is said that man, if he were strong in the same proportions could jump so many rods or lift so many tons. These comparisons, according to the eminent French investigator, Robina, are misleading to say the least. In his opinion, it is interesting to consider solely from a mechanical point of view these comparisons between the muscular strength of man and that of insects. Strictly from this standpoint they are by no means extraordinary, and are only one of the fcfrms of what has been called the ‘‘conflict of squares and cubes." The law is well known—volumes decrease in more rapid ratio than surfaces. The force that a muscle can exert depends upon its section'-that is, on a surface—although its capacity for doing work depends on its volume, as is logical. Here is the explanation of the astounding strength of insects^ As an ,example, compare two muscles,' that of a man and that of an insect, the latter 100 times shorter than the former. It is evident that the insect’s muscle will be 1,000,000 times lighter than the man’s, while its section, and consequently the fprce it can exert, will be only 10.000 times less. The conclusion is that since a man can lift 62 pounds, the insect will lift 10,000 times less, or 154 grains, and one gets the impressive spectacle of an insect lifting more than 100 times its own weight. In fact, the smaller the insect is the more it will astonish us by an appearance of extraordinary strength. But it is no longer the same if one examines the mechanical work effected. The muscles of the insect, supposed to be one-hundredth of a man’s in linear dimensions, furnishes. when it contracts, a force 10,000' times/ (less than the human muscle, exerted through a space 100 times smaller.

Moreover, it seems just as with machines where the smaller are proportionately weaker, as if the insect's muscle, instead of surpassing man’s infinitely, is notably inferior to it in quality. Take tho flea’s jump, for instance. By its muscular cont -action it gives to its mass a movement capable oi raising it 12in. Man can raise his own height about sft by leaping. For equal weight the human muscle thus furnishes five times more work than that of the flea in a single contraction.