Do you know how ants sleep? Demystify the mystery of ant sleep

Demystify the mystery of ant sleep.

The queen flies asleep all day, while the worker ant works day and night, and is seriously sleep deprived. American scientists study the sleep patterns of fire ants and uncover the mystery of ant sleep.

Scientists raised a colony of fire ants in a laboratory artificial environment, including three queens, thirty worker ants and thirty eggs. The scientists have also installed cameras to facilitate monitoring of their activities.

Experiments have shown that fire ant queens sleep an average of 9 hours a day, including both deep sleep and occasional naps, while worker ants sleep for just over four hours a day, and they have no right to sleep comfortably. That's why queens can live for years at a time, researchers say, while worker ants usually live short. Only in this way can we ensure that there are enough worker ants in the ant nest at any time to take care of household chores and be ready at all times to defend against foreign invasions.

Scientists speculate that fire ants usually live underground, so their sleep patterns are not affected by sunrise, sunset. Experiments eventually confirmed this hypothesis. Researcher Derby Castle said humorously: "Let's see how lazy the queen is!"

The researchers also found that worker ants would take a nap at irregular intervals, and they would not take a nap at the same time. However, the number of times workers snooze every day is really amazing. On average, worker ants snooze about 250 times a day, and each time they doze for just over a minute. This is equivalent to sleeping only 4 hours and 48 minutes a day. This means that 80% of the workforce is active at all times.

The reason why worker ants snooze so frequently and the time of each nap is so short is entirely because of the needs of work. Castle said that whenever the work is needed, there are always 'workers' to do it. Of course, when there is less 'life', the worker ants can sleep more.

In contrast, the sleeping habits of the queens are equally surprising. First, the queens slept much longer, and the three queens made an appointment to sleep at the same time. Castle explains that the queens sleep much more comfortably, and the reason they sleep at the same time is because they like to sleep together, wake up and separately, and go their separate ways, which is a bit similar to a hound.

Queens slept an average of 90 times a day, and slept for more than 6 minutes at a time. In this way, they sleep more than 9 hours a day.

In addition, queens have two distinct sleep patterns. One of the sleep modes is similar to people dozing off, the queen's antennae are slightly curved, the mouth is slightly open, and the sleep in this mode is easily awakened by other queens or worker ants; In another sleep mode, the queen completely retracts her tentacles, closes her mouth, and sleeps much deeper. Interestingly, the evidence suggests that queens dream when they are asleep, and their retracted antennae shake twice from time to time, just as their eyes turn when they dream.

What the use of sleep is still unknown. However, from the perspective of ant society, it is precisely because there are worker ants working day and night that the queen can live a comfortable and comfortable life.

Worker ants are at the bottom of ant society, and their death or death does not matter at all. Those high-risk jobs are done by worker ants, so as to ensure that the queen can live a long life and her royal descendants can be kept away from danger and hunger.

Queens generally live for 6 years before dying, while worker ants can only live for half a year to a year, either dying of old age or dying of death.