livescience.com
If anyone has ever called you "the bee's knees," take it as a compliment! The phrase dates back to the 1920s & describes a "highly admired person or thing," according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
But have you ever really stopped to imagine a bee with knees? Do bees — & other insects, for that matter — even have knees?
First, let's consider the knee we know best: our own. The human knee is a complicated structure. It includes 3 bones: the femur (thigh bone), tibia (shin bone), & patella (kneecap). But it's not just bones. An assortment of cartilage, ligaments, & tendons, with the help of lubricants, all work in sync to help you straighten & bend your leg at the knee. Many other animals — such as birds, mammals & some reptiles — also have knees with kneecaps.
Bees & their fellow insects, on the other hand, do not have bones in the sense that other animals do. Unlike vertebrates, which have hard skeletons that hold up their squishy outsides, bees & other insects are the opposite: A bee's skeleton, or exoskeleton, is on the outside. The exoskeleton, made of a tough material called chitin, protects its internal softer parts.
But similarly to the legs of humans & other legged animals, bees' legs are made up of distinct segments. According to Ramesh Sagili, a bee researcher at Oregon State University, bee legs are divided into 5 parts; starting closest to the body, they are the coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, & tarsus.
In between the femur & the tibia, is there a knee like ours? The answer is no, according to Sagili.
"There will be a chitin joint [between] each of these segments," Sagili told Live Science. "Bees have 6 segments on the leg, & they are all joined together."
Rather than a jumble of tendons, ligaments, & a kneecap, bees have a simple ball-&-socket joint between their leg segments, Sagili said. Those joints help bees move their legs, groom themselves, dislodge pollen or dance to show their hive-mates where to find nectar-filled flowers.
In the early 20th century, before its evolution into a compliment, people used the phrase 'the bee's knees' to describe something that doesn't exist — & they were right. So, while bees don't have the same knees we do, they still have a joint between their tibia & femur that allows them some flexibility.
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