Is it true that ants do not sleep all their lives?
Scientific arguments
Human physiology is a very mysterious thing. We have been saying for a long time that sleep is the best medicine, but we do not realize how good sleep is for us. Scientists still cannot solve the mystery of dreams, which often accompany sleep.
Even more questions from the scientific community are the so-called lucid dreams, which a person can control by the power of his consciousness (or subconscious) during falling asleep and various stages of sleep.
It would seem that sleep is inherent in all living beings on our planet. But actually it is not true. At least, that's how it was thought for a relatively long time. There are living beings in the world who do not need sleep at all. Ants are one of these creatures.
There are a number of insect scientists who claim that ants do not sleep during their entire lives. Numerous studies of the life of these working insects prompted scientists to such an idea.
Video footage that was obtained after studying many anthills in various parts of the world show that ants are constantly on the move for the most part, which gave rise to the hypothesis that ants do not need sleep.
However, there is another opinion...
New hypothesis
However, this hypothesis has recently come under criticism. Video materials were presented showing ants in static state. They literally froze on the way, and even tilted their heads and their antennae stopped moving.
This gave rise to a new hypothesis. The hypothesis is that stopping the ant for a few minutes is his sleep. This hypothesis has a kind of confirmation. Ants that ran past the "resting fellow" touched him. But he did not react in any way, or his reaction was inhibited. Studies on fire ants have shown that ants have approximately 253 sleep episodes per day, each of which lasted approximately 1.1 minutes.
Studies of queen ants stand out in particular. Initially, it was also believed that they do not sleep. But it is difficult to imagine a living organism whose life can last more than 10 years without sleep during all this time.
So, it was found that the queen ant also goes into an immobilized state for about a few tens of seconds. A video camera placed in the chamber of the ant queen captured the fact that the queen ant “falls asleep” up to 100 times a day. The total duration of daily sleep is comparable to the duration of a person's daily sleep - about 8 hours a day.
That is why it is believed that absolutely all living beings are subject to sleep; only this sleep manifests itself in different ways in each case. For example, a shark can go into a sleep state while moving. However, its movement in the water at the moment does not mean at all that it is awake.
