https://sites.nd.edu/biomechanics-in-the-wild/2024/11/06/ant...

"Scaling laws indicate that smaller organisms, such as ants, benefit from a greater strength-to-size ratio, partly due to the favorable scaling of muscle cross-sectional area relative to body mass. A 2023 study by Clemente and Dick emphasizes that while larger organisms have more total muscle mass, the strength per unit mass decreases with increasing size due to scaling effects."

To me it hit home when i recognized that high frequency 200Hz+ wing beat by say a bee - which we tend to think about as extremely "fast" - still have only about 5m/s wing tip speed - which is actually very slow and thus extremely efficient, and orders of magnitude more efficient than say helicopter blades (or even small drone props) having tip speed at 200m/s. (Note: that is even without taking into account different air viscosity, Rayleigh number, at that scale. Different air and fluid viscosities at those scales and different relative scales of surface tension and capillary forces - microfluidics so to speak - are also what insects are heavily optimized for and take advantage of.)

To illustrate - similar to bee efficiency at the scale of the human body - human powered helicopter - 150 feet span https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zNrCbcQVmuE . Note that while similar to the bee wing efficiency is achieved at that scale, the human power density is lower than the bee's, so it can fly only for short periods of time that that top cyclist can produce his highest power.

The scaling laws also dictate exoskeleton being more efficient than internal skeleton for the small bodies like the insects' ones, and also the breathing by the decentralized system of spiracles than by the centralized internal lungs.