300 million years ago Earth was the kingdom of giant insects as time went on they eventually went extinct and then the dinosaurs entered the scene but what if that never happened what if these giant scorpions worms and dragonflies were still around today and how did they go extinct in the first place this is what if and here's what would happen if the giant insects never went extinct okay before we get to what our insects would be like today well first we need to go back the Carboniferous period also known as the age of oxygen ran
from 400 million years ago to 290 million years ago super sized dragonfly wannabes also known as Griffin flies had wingspans up to 70 CM they darted about gobbling up smaller insects the Griffin flies were also 45 cm long they had huge eyes and vision like a hawk their spiny legs helped them grab their prey then there was the mazos it was 55 cm long and had six wings it had two pairs of regular wings and an additional pair of winglets but its scariest feature it had a beak-like mouth equipped with a sucking pump like a
vampire it would pierce the tissues of plants and drink their juices maybe in the modern day it would go after you but we'll answer that later on there was also the giant millipede arthr plura Armada entering the room at 2 and 1/2 m in length luckily this guy is strictly vegan he dined on fruits leaves and seeds and watch out for these massive scorpions as big as tennis rackets you do not want to be on the wrong end of that Stinger but hold on what made these in sex grow so big in the first place
the answer lies in the weather the Earth was having at the time our Earth doesn't have a lot in common with the peran period except maybe the heat let's be real the planet is heating up and we need to do something about it and I just might have the solution I'm talking about solar slice a revolutionary way to combat climate change how does it work well it's pretty simple you sponsor a slice of a large scale solar farm adding 50 watts of solar power to the grid and reducing harmful emissions then you track your impact
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the perian period at the beginning of this period around 350 million years ago it was warm and as warm weather does it encouraged the plants to grow around this time oxygen levels in the atmosphere were about 20% similar to what we have now on Earth fast forward 50 million years later massive forests have taken over and swamps cover low lying areas oxygen levels well they've skyrocketed to 35% now the high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere made the insects big but how exactly well first you got to look at how insects breathe insects don't have
lungs like we do they have a set of openings on their bodies called spiracles these spiral openings lead to a set of tubes called trachea which run through the insect's bodies air enters the spiracles and passes through the trachea to deliver oxygen to all the cells in the insect's body the more oxygen in the air the more that can pass into the insect's body now there was 35% oxygen in the air at that time and this allowed insects to take in more oxygen which allowed them to grow bigger but then 150 million years ago so
something changed oxygen levels went up but insect size went down why because a ruthless killer of insects arrived on the scene Birds which are as you know flying dinosaurs these birds feasted on insects they looked at the giant Griffin flies and salivated and the bigger the insect the more likely it was to get eaten by a bird so insect evolutionary survival strategy was to get small and Nimble the large insects went extinct and the smaller ones survived okay so now that we know what happened to the giant insects was there a way they could have
avoided Extinction well the easiest way would be for the oxygen levels to go back up to 35% okay the insects would get larger but large insects would still be hunted by birds which are in most cases stronger so our insects need some better survival strategies let's look at the largest insects we have today one of them being the WETA it's 10 cm long and has been around since even before the dinosaurs so how has it survived by getting an island of its own in the wetest case New Zealand it lived here for millions of years
without having to worry about any Predators but as a long-term survival strategy it hasn't exactly worked out Predators eventually came to to New Zealand and wetta now live in the Auckland Zoo okay we need a better option for our giant insects how about a supercharged stealth reproduction strategy like the cicas after mating the female cicada lays nearly 400 eggs these eggs hatch in about 6 to 8 weeks and the young nymphs drop down burrow into the ground and don't come out for up to 17 years that's definitely one way to do it as an insect
if you make yourself scarce no one can eat you maybe our giant prehistoric insects could try that but where's the fun in spending most of your life underground so there's one more option we call it the chemical warfare strategy and it's used by the lber Yeah the lber a large grasshopper about 8 cm long now that's much smaller than our Carboniferous ancestors but it has some great survival strategies that we can use lovers are great at picking up various poisons from plants like onions or garlic and they then make a poisonous broth that they can
use against predators think of it as Nature's pepper spray when they meet a predator like a bird or a rat they eject their poisonous broth creating a chemical Cloud Predators then gag and spit out the lovers and if this fails they've got an internal toxin lined up an unsuspecting bird that eats a lber will vomit and then they never never try to eat one again okay so now let's see if giving these insects some survival tactics will work to stop them from going extinct with the world at 35% oxygen and some internal toxins yeah the
giant insects now fight off the birds but what happens when the chickaloo asteroid hits that's the one that wiped out the dinosaurs well it's actually a pretty good thing for our insects because the biggest predators are gone and there's plenty of swamp be dying material for our insects to Feast on but what would happen to mammal and human evolution would we even be around because today if our air became 35% oxygen overnight that would be toxic for us it would cause coughing difficulty breathing and in severe cases seizures and death but then again if apes
and then humans evolved in 35% oxygen then our bodies would have evolved to function in that environment our cells would be supercharged producing even more energy with higher oxygen we'd be super Runners and super swimmers breaking all of today's records and our brains which use 20% of the oxygen we breathe would have evolved to grow even bigger and faster okay so now it's time to return to the modern day what does the world look like well if you looked out your window during the summer instead of just seeing different birds you you'd see giant Griffin
flies and six-winged insects buzzing around would these giant arthropods attack you if you went outside well during some period of evolution there'd likely be a bunch of large winged insects that attacked humans especially those pesky Griffin flies but remember we humans are no pushovers during different time periods we'd have likely developed weapons to fight against these giant insects during the Stone Age maybe it was a sharp Rock today we probably have special bug sprays or zappers to fight them back sooner or later just like the birds would have evolved to leave the giant insects alone
the giant insects would steer clear of us humans now in addition to giant bugs flying around outside we might have giant cockroaches and giant spiders as well if these insects developed chemical defenses against predators well that could enable them to stay giant but without these defenses they'd be better off being small and Nimble so maybe mosquitoes would stay small with giant cockroaches you'd need a whole new level of pest control to keep your kitchen safe now if bugs were giant would humans have evolved to be a whole lot bigger too it's possible we'd be bigger
there's evidence to show that oxygen levels were rising from 15% to 19% when the dinosaurs first appeared so there could be a link but only if it gave us an evolutionary Advantage now talking about things getting bigger one other danger would get bigger too fires everything would be highly combustible the smallest spark would get a blaze going and some of these fires might even be caused by giant insects take the Bombadier Beetle when it's threatened it mixes two chemicals from inside its abdomen to create an explosion well a giant sized Bombadier Beetle might set off
a much bigger explosion one they could start a forest fire and in 35% oxygen forests would burn frequently in fact plants would probably evolve to be more resistant to fires or they would have strategies to grow back quicker after getting burnt and you'd also notice that the world would be getting a lot louder a mass of cicas today are about as loud as a lawnmower around 100 DB but giant cicas they'd probably make you go deatha and you know what else El is likely to happen we'll probably have insects on the menu we humans like
to eat everything so we'll definitely be looking to add these as a protein Source once they're bigger they're probably perfect for a meal you'll have meatless Monday and probably have giant insects Friday down under they'll probably be throwing Griffin flies in the Bobby with our Advanced technological noow I think us humans Will Survive a world with giant insects but what if it was wasn't just giant insects what if the other Giants from our ancient history the dinosaurs never went extinct well that sounds like a story for another what if
