the title is pretty self explanatory why can’t bugs be big
In: Biology
Bugs lack lungs and hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is what transports/carries oxygen to cells and it’s also why our blood is red (and bug blood is green or clear). Chitin is RIDICULOUSLY heavy and is only useful at a small scale.
They rely on holes in their body to passively respirate (NOT breathe) which limits their size. The larger the bug, the harder it is to have holes that reach the innermost guts.
Every (iirc) multicellular organism requires oxygen to live; the larger and more activethe creature the more oxygen it needs.
In order for a bug to become larger, it must gain the ability to produce hemoglobin (ridiculously hard to adapt), gain an endo skeleton/lose their exoskeleton (arguably impossible), adapt ‘gills’ and a swim bladder which can then be merged into lungs (reliant on hemoglobin already being produced). That, or have the entirety of Earth’s atmosphere become exponentially richer in oxygen, and even then, they couldn’t get very much larger.
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