Honestly, I'm not sure what to say except that YouTuber Precarious333's video of a Giant Texas Katydid (Neobarrettia spinosa) chirping, breathing, and grooming is way more captivating than I expected it to be. Full screen it, and crank it to the highest resolution your Internet connection can muster. You won't regret it.
Pretty incredible, right? I couldn't look away. The video feels very intimate. Have you ever looked so closely at an insect? I don't mean macrophotography. I'm talking about extremely close-up footage of a bug in motion. I don't come across videos like this too often, but whenever I do, I'm reminded of how stunningly, eerily, freakily different insects are from us. (All relatively speaking, of course. I'm sure sentient insects would find us pretty freaky, too.)
Just look at how they breathe. Insects respire a lot differently than you and me. Like us, they depend on oxygen to fuel their cellular processes, but instead of breathing through their mouths, they take in air through a series of tiny holes called spiracles. These spiracles are distributed along an insect's exoskeleton, and act as portals to a ramifying network of tiny, internal, fluid-filled tubes called tracheae, which the insect uses in place of lungs. Air enters through the spiracles and diffuses down the tracheae. Oxygen from the atmosphere is delivered to the insect's cells, where it is exchanged for carbon dioxide. CO2 is then emitted back into the atmosphere via the tracheael system, typically through spiracles located toward the rear of the insect.