Get this, bees have hearts. And arses. Ants do too. I've been a bit stumped over the weekend trying to find out the truth in these matters; it just didn't seem right that bees did (I mean, they're too small, surely. The blood vessels just wouldn't be right -- aren't they only a couple of blood cells across? So the scale would be all wrong).

But ants have hearts: "The heart is a long tube that pumps colorless blood from the head back to the rear and then back up to the head again. The blood kind of coats the insides of the ants and is then sucked into the tube and pumped up to the head again". And this Introduction to Insect Anatomy confirms that those tiny things do have arses. Stunning.

But no lungs. Ants do not have lungs. But snails do -- and I just thought they were kind of full of goo and magic stuff.

I'm truly stunned by all of this. Thank you to Catherine whose l33t Googling skillz are far l33t-er than mine.

More questions: What is the smallest animal you can milk? And I know they make snake wine in China, but could you make bee jam?