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do bugs sleep?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 12:31 pm
by Spaceboy
kinda out of the blue... but do they...?

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:02 pm
by CDN_Merlin
catch one, video tape it for 24 hrs and see. I think they do.

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:06 pm
by Cuda68-2
I was able to google up this answer:

In the general sense of the word, bugs definitely do sleep. They don't close their eyes, but their rates of oxygen consumption do drop at various periods during a 24 hour cycle. Does it matter when? You bet it does. An insect has various needs; they have to find a mate, find enough food and avoid predators in the process. Thus, every insect has their own time of day or night when sleep is appropriate for them. Moths tend to have a period of inactivity during the day. Like many other insects, they will find a place of refuge, such as the underside of a leaf, to avoid predators. For dragonflies, who hunt and court mates by sight, there is no point remaining active at night.

You may find more information on this subject in a book called Insect Photoperiodism by Stanley Beck.

Hope this helps

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:21 pm
by Vertigo 99
they definitly do sleep. ive come accross insects that are just simply "not moving," before, with their eyes open, just sitting there. it is often possible to startle them and make them move

Posted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 1:32 pm
by Mobius
"insects with eyes open" implies eyelids, which insects most pointedly do no have.

Yeah bugs sleep - they even hybernate.

My home, when I moved in this year, contained maybe 2000+ ladybirds. They were all piled up in the top corners of rooms throughout the house - they had come inside for the winter, and the house was cold before we moved in.

Poking them, or dislodging them from their corners showed them to be "asleep" as they simply lay there doing nothing even with pokes and prods.

What *DID* wake them up though, was warming the room! This, presumably, triggers the "Summer's Here - YAY!" reaction in their bodies. They were pretty dopey waking up though, and they'd fall out of the piles of buddies they'd be sleeping with, and crawl, very slowly about the place - looking a bit dazed and confused - if it's possible to tell what a dazed and confused ladybird looks like. Hehe.

Anyway, after maybe an hour or more of staggering around wondering where the hell they were, they were capable of unfurling their wings from underneath their hard wing covers, and make some pathetic attempts to get airbourne - not very successfully it needs to be added.

Of course, the poor little buggers were doomed to death. Waking up every time we warmed rooms, and then staqggering around until it got cold again.

This spring time, I vacummed hundreds and hundreds every week. They were all dead. Having woken up, they were incapable of getting outside - glass confusing their tiny minds. Even leaving all the windows open didn't help matters. Poor little blighters.