Home▸Entomology & Insect Behaviour▸Inside a Bee

🐝 Inside a Bee: Internal Organs & Nervous System

A translucent 3D honeybee cutaway showing how the digestive tract, tracheal (breathing) tubes, dorsal-vessel heart and ventral nerve cord work together beneath the exoskeleton.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour3DModerate60 FPS

A translucent 3D honeybee model with its exoskeleton faded away to reveal the digestive tract, tracheal breathing tubes, dorsal-vessel heart and ventral nerve cord all working together inside.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

The insect body plan beneath the cuticle: an open circulatory system with a single pulsing heart tube, tracheal tubes that deliver oxygen directly to tissues, and a ladder-like ventral nerve cord instead of a spinal cord.

🎮 How to Use

Fade the cuticle with the transparency slider, switch activity level to speed up the heartbeat and ventilation, and toggle each internal system on or off to study it in isolation. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

💡 Did You Know?

A honeybee's heart rate can jump from around 90 beats per minute at rest to well over 200 during flight, while abdominal pumping drives air through the tracheal system to keep the flight muscles oxygenated.

⚙ Under the hood

A translucent 3D honeybee model whose exoskeleton fades away to reveal its ventral nerve cord, pulsing dorsal-vessel heart, branching tracheal breathing tubes and digestive tract all animating together, with heartbeat and ventilation rate tied to a selectable activity level.

bee-anatomybee-physiologyinsect-nervous-systementomologybee-braininsect-biology

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install