Ants Never Sleep
Is it true that ants never sleep
August 15, 2016 - Ants Never Sleep
It is a common misconception that ants never sleep. It may seem that ants are always on the go, moving with purpose and working hard to help the survival of their Queen and conservation of their colony, however they certainly do sleep.
Not only do ants sleep, according to a study on fire ants by researchers at the University of South Florida in St Petersburg that was published in the Journal of Insect Behaviour, these tiny pests also appear to dream.
The sleeping pattern of an ant is very different from humans. Ants do not follow regular sleeping schedules, rather a cyclical pattern of resting periods. Worker ants take about 250 tiny power naps that last about 1 minute on average at odd times throughout the day and night, for a total of nearly five hours of sleep per day. Whereas the Queens slept about 6 minutes at a time, 90 times each day. This may help explain why queens live for up to 100 times longer than worker ants that typically only live for a few months.
Other awesome things you should know about ants:
Queens can live for up to 30 years
Workers can live for up to 3 years
Ants are very strong and can lift 20 times their own body weight
An ants brain has about 250 000 brain cells
Ants don’t have lungs, they breath through small holes found around their bodies
Most ants can survive about 24 hours underwater
The total weight of all the ants in the world is the same as, if not larger than that of all humans
Ants are the longest living of all insects, living for up to 30 years
There are over 12,000 known different species
All worker, soldier and queen ants are female
Some ants have no eyes
Sources:
news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8100000/8100876.stm