'Every wall is a door': The grasshopper wing circulatory system forms a closed flow circuit where hemolymph (insect blood) is optimally circulated with diversified flow techniques.
Grasshoppers possess auditory organs on their abdomen, fly with their wings, and achieve impressive jumps thanks to their strong legs. Grasshoppers need to circulate fluid through their wing veins as they need nutrients to be transported to all the wings' living tissues. For this, grasshoppers have a strategy to optimize the surface area and make the most of the pumping to reach almost the entire wing surface. Its wing is a soft-bodied microfluidic device with thin membranes and tubes. Both wings are densely veined and contain longitudinal veins from base to tip, interconnected by numerous, shorter cross-veins. Grasshopper wings form a closed flow circuit where the 'blood' (hemolymph) flows in three distinct ways: pulsatile, aperiodic, and leaky/permeable flow types. The main heart pumps liquid inside the wings, and each wing has its independent and corresponding heart, which functions as a suction pump to return the wing liquid to the insect's body. Engineers could design a bioinspired system inspired by this mechanism for optimized circulation and distribution of a liquid flowing inside a system as needed.
