Many people are surprised to learn that ants sleep. Even more surprising is the evidence that suggest they may dream (RAE is a sleep state found in ants and bees chattered by Rapid Antennae Movements and possibly similar to the REM sleep in mammals)
Ants sleep frequently and in funny locations. Generally they will rest their thorax and gaster on the ground, fold their antennae and be very still. They nap for 10min up to an hour. Queen ants will sleep for up to 4 hours at a time.
@futurebird Oddly, I was just thinking about the evolution of sleep lying in bed this morning. I was wondering if there are any animals that don't sleep and how far back in evolution we would have to go to not have it.
I was wondering if there were other evolutionary solutions out there for the same basic function. From what I know the basic function of sleep is roughly mental garbage cleanup and memory consolidation.
It just seems weird that somewhere along the line there was an animal through a fluke of genetics would just "shut down" occasionally. And this provided enough evolutionary advantage to make up for the obvious problem of being completely vulnerable for a portion of it's life.
@DocVoitane @futurebird I was taught but I would double check with the latest research, that sharks don't sleep.
🇳🇱
This isnt entirely my expertise, but as a deep-sea scuba diver (the highest level of training available) I can tell you this isnt true. Sharks do sleep, but it doesnt always look like what humans think of as sleep.
So some sharks can stop entirely and rest on the bottom of hte ocean. Those sharks breath through gulping while they sleep.
Other sharks must keep swimming but still experience sleep, they sleep as they swim basically, and the sleep cycles can be seen on an EEG.
All animals sleep, some just dont sleep like humans sleep.
Wanted to leave the video in thread too (put it as a top level post on my feed)... Here it is for any onlookers in thread:
@freemo @pablo @DocVoitane @futurebird aww... look at the cute #blahaj cuddling...
@pablo
I actually have a video of me coming up to a group of about 5 sharks all sleeping together... I slipped into the middle of them and took a "nap" along with them :)
@DocVoitane @futurebird