Do insects have hearts?
It's not easy to find a lot of similarities between people and insects. Insects have six legs, and we have two. They're small, and compared to them, we're giants!
But just like us, insects do have hearts!
The heart of an insect isn't like you might imagine though. It's actually a tube that runs almost the whole length of their bodies. It pumps insects' blood from the ends of their bodies to their heads.
Aside from their tube-shaped hearts, insects don't have blood vessels like we do.
Their blood just flows through their bodies in the spaces between all of their body parts. Once it travels from their heads to their tail ends, the heart pumps it back to their heads again! People are too large and our bodies have too many sections for our hearts to work like that, so instead, we have veins and arteries that act like a highway, carrying our blood everywhere it needs to go!
(by Mya Kagan)
Exploration
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
Do you know the song Head, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes? When listening or singing the song, you touch your head, your shoulders, your knees, and your toes. And then in another section, you point to your eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
What about these four body parts? The heart, the lungs, the stomach, and the liver. Can you point to those? Ask a grown-up for help if you aren't sure where those parts are!
