As we all know, sleep is essential as it restores and rejuvenates. Without it, our minds are not as sharp, and our reflexes become dull. The same is also true for ants and they definitely rest.
Even ants need to sleep, perchance to dream, and interestingly, the amount of ZZZ’s that an ant needs to catch depends on its rank in the colony hierarchy. [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]Some ants sleep for a while, when others take their place in performing duties. Taking turns in their sleep, these clever ants actually fool us into believing that they are working all day. Queen fire ants fall into relatively long, deep sleeps for an average of nine hours every day.
Workers sleep just half as much and get to rest by taking hundreds of short power naps. On average, a single worker ant would take 250 naps each day, with each one lasting just over a minute. This equates to four hours and 48 minutes of sleep a day.
That also means that 80 per cent of the workforce are awake and active at any one time. Ants are also inactive in cold temperatures and many species hibernate throughout the winter. Resting ants exhibit loss of muscle tone and reduced sensitivity to stimuli. But they do not have a complex nervous system to exhibit the different brain wave patterns seen in humans during sleep, nor do they dream.
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