Can insects sleep? Where do wasps winter, do insects sleep during the cold season? How grasshoppers hibernate
With all the obvious differences, humans and bees find some common ground. Just like us, these hard-working insects sleep up to 8 hours a day. Just like us, they are extraordinarily social. But if people speak and write to communicate, honey bees dance next to each other. They tilt their bodies at a certain angle, which serves as a signal to their fellows. This way you can convey information to the rest of the hive about where to look for the best flower pollen.
Just as in human populations, the honey bee colony is divided into different labor sectors. It has its own cleaners, nurses, guards, worker bees collecting nectar. As a bee ages, its career progresses downward.
Sleep is necessary for bees to replenish their strength.
Of course, these little hard workers must replenish their strength through sleep. Nature took care of their circadian rhythms, so insects sleep from 5 to 8 hours daily. They do this mostly at night, when darkness prevents them from looking for nectar. But if the main goal of the entire hive is productivity, what makes bees spend up to one-third of their time resting? What are the benefits of sleep for bees? Over the past few years, scientists have set out to uncover this mystery. Why do bees rest so much, and why is their life activity so reminiscent of ours? Every year more and more interesting facts are revealed to science.
As early as the 3rd century BC, Aristotle began to study in detail the hierarchy of honey bee colonies. Since then, subsequent generations of the best scientific minds have constantly returned to this topic in their works. It seems that now science knows everything about these amazing creatures. However, every decade a new facet of honey bees is revealed to the world. Do they never cease to amaze us? “The life of bees is like white magic. The more you study it, the more facts it fills up,” wrote Karl von Frisch, the German Nobel laureate, back in 1950.
Research by Walter Kaiser
In 1983, researcher Walter Kaiser made a new discovery. It was then that the world learned that honey bees can sleep. While the scientist was watching the hive, he found that at some point each bee's limbs begin to bend, then the body bows to the floor, and then the head. In the end, the bee antennae stop moving. In some cases, during sleep, the insects fell on their side, exhausted from fatigue. Many bees, resting, held the limbs of their fellows. Walter Kaiser's study was the first scientific observation of sleep in invertebrates, but it won't be the last.
Later, scientists discovered that sleep is not alien to cockroaches and fruit flies. Even jellyfish have periods of calm in their life cycle. All of this evidence is consistent with the general idea that all animal species have a need for sleep. As a result, scientists came to the conclusion that this trend has no generally recognized exception. Sleep is common in most species and is an integral part of the life cycle.
What happens if the bees are deprived of their usual rest?
To understand why bees sleep, scientists went on an inhumane experiment by deliberately forcing the bees to stay awake at night. How will they behave when deprived of sleep? We think that the answer to this question will not surprise you. Sleepy bees become completely sloppy and cannot communicate with each other properly.
Now, instead of wagging dances, indicating the direction of flight with incredible accuracy, insects that had not rested the day before made absolutely ridiculous and clumsy movements. Thus, their brethren could not find directions to a source of food. Disoriented bees lost their way, while they were wasting precious time and energy. As a result, the entire colony suffered because of a few experimental bees. Well, the sleep-deprived insects were completely exhausted and probably overwhelmed by their failure. They could not find their way back to the hive, having lost the connection between the sky and the surrounding sights. It turns out that not only the accuracy of movements suffered, but also the inner instinct and attentiveness. Many of them get lost in this situation and never return home. That is why this experiment is considered cruel.
Lack of proper sleep makes you forget about your usual activities.
Without proper rest at night, the bees will have to forget about the activities that have become second nature to them. A new study by Randolph Menzel and his colleagues at the Free University of Berlin has revealed why this is happening. To begin with, let's take a look at the human body, which works as an accurate and well-oiled mechanism. When we sleep, we go through three phases of sleep. During the deep sleep phase, all of our memories are processed and information is transferred from short-term to long-term memory. German scientists set out to find out if this principle works in relation to bees. If yes, then these amazing insects can dream.
In order to test the quality of long-term and short-term sleep, the researchers had to teach the bees something new. Nothing better came to mind for the German specialists than to choose a proven scheme, the one according to which Menzel acted in 1983. When feeding, honey bees demonstrate rather stereotypical behavior: they expose their proboscis and enthusiastically absorb food. It is curious that a specific body odor and protruding proboscis may be present even when the insect is not busy feeding. This phenomenon has a similar principle to the well-known reflex of Pavlov's dog. At first, bees associate nectar with food, but they are easily trained. Already after the third test, they show good performance. Insects are so smart that learning takes place without the use of rewards. Hana Zwaka, one of the authors of the study, says: “If you work with them, you quickly realize that they are very smart and it’s such a pleasure to watch them learn!”
Sleep monitoring
After the first stage was completed, the bees were allowed to sleep in personal plastic tubes. At this time, an experiment was conducted on some individuals: scientists deliberately stimulated the activity of their brain with specific smells and heat. A control group was created, exposed to neutral fragrances. Vaseline oil was supposed to promote the reactivation of conditioned reflexes.
The next day, when the bees woke up, memory tests began. Even from night time, the main group of bees (the one that was stimulated by the smells of food) showed their conditioned reflex - a protruding proboscis.
Bees can store information in memory
If smell and warmth were presented to subjects in deep sleep, it had a powerful effect. But during other, shallow stages of sleep, the experiment had no effect on the bees. They did not store this information in memory. As we can see, there are direct analogies with the mechanism of sleep in humans. Despite the fact that the bodies of insects during the phase of deep sleep remain inactive, their brains work hard during this time. The activity of the previous day is activated, the last, more fragile memories are stabilized and transferred to the long-term memory storage. This means that in the following days new information will be available to the bees in a permanent form.
The experts described the study by Menzel and colleagues as "a job well done on memory." In the future, they hope to repeat the experiment using more accurate methods.
Conclusion
Previously, it was thought that only humans could dream. This limited the ability of mammals, birds, reptiles and other groups of animals. Research in recent decades has shown that dreams may not only occur during the deep sleep phase. So, for example, people remember faces, animals, houses, and whole storylines more clearly due to the phase of non-REM sleep, the one that precedes awakening. Therefore, if bees can sleep at all, dreaming about yellow or blue flowers is not a problem for them.
At the end of summer, annoying, scurrying wasps become a real problem for people. Insects curl ripened fruits, fly into the open windows of apartments, sit on sweet foods. With the onset of cold weather, their activity decreases markedly. What happens to insects after snowfall, where wasps hibernate?
Variety of wasps in nature
In the world there are a huge number of varieties of wasps. All of them belong to the order Hymenoptera, which have two pairs of wings. The size of adults is from 10 to 55 mm, with males being smaller than females. Their oral apparatus consists of strong jaws capable of tearing prey and nibbling a layer of bark from trees. A distinctive feature of wasps is a thin stalk between the chest and abdomen, a kind of wasp waist.
All insects belonging to this family can be divided into two main groups: solitary and social wasps. The former lead a solitary lifestyle, often building nests in the ground or not at all, preferring to lay their eggs on larvae and spiders. Public or paper wasps are habitual striped individuals, buzzing around gardens and parks. They live in colonies from several tens to thousands of individuals.
Paper wasps
Features of the life cycle of real wasps
Birth and nesting
Wasps are not noticeable in winter and early spring, but with the onset of steady heat, the first scouts fly out. These are the future queens, which since last autumn have been storing in their body the sperm of the males that have fertilized them. Insects are looking for the first flowers to refresh themselves with nectar. The young female has to fulfill the main function of her life - to give rise to a new family. She finds a suitable place and starts building a nest. The material is chewed tree bark, abundantly moistened with saliva. After drying, the substance becomes like thick paper.
reproduction
The future queen builds honeycombs, in the cells of which she lays her eggs. After a few days, carnivorous larvae appear, requiring meat food. During this period, the female is actively engaged in the destruction of tree pests, they serve as food for the growing larvae. The first wasps are sterile females and will assist the queen in caring for the next generation and building the nest.
In August and September, young queens and males will appear ready to mate for breeding. After fertilization of females, most of the males die. Old queens who have lost the ability to lay eggs will not survive the second winter. They will die along with the workers. Among the many types of paper wasps, there are females whose life cycle is 2-4 years. They fall into a state of winter sleep several times.
Information. What do wasps eat in winter? Before the onset of cold weather, females try to accumulate more nutrients in the body. After immersion in diapause, they become so passive that they survive the winter due to the accumulated substances.
How do wasps winter in nature?
In autumn, with a decrease in daylight hours and a decrease in the temperature of the uterus, the wasps begin to seek shelter. The most successful choice is to dig deeper under the bark of a tree. It's warmer and harder for birds to get to. Females can hide in old stumps, under a bunch of fallen leaves, hide in the cracks of outbuildings. Insect lovers are wondering - do wasps sleep in winter or not? During the period when insects cannot satisfy their needs, they fall into a state of inhibition.
The metabolism practically stops, the body becomes insensitive to low temperatures. In the body of wintering queens, a component is produced that is similar in properties to antifreeze. It helps the wasps survive the cold. For a successful awakening, the absence of sharp fluctuations in temperature is important. Untimely warming is detrimental to females. The chemical composition of the cells changes, due to which, during the subsequent cooling, the mechanism that prevents the crystallization of the liquid is lost.
Information. At abnormally low temperatures, which are uncharacteristic of temperate latitudes, wasp body cells crystallize. This irreversible process leads to the death of queens.
The dangers of wintering
Not all uterus will be able to meet the spring. While they sleep with their legs and wings bent, they are in danger in the form of animals and birds left to spend the winter in the forests. These natural enemies of wasps find and eat insects.
Interesting fact. During the summer period, the wasp colony builds a large nest, which has protective shells and is characterized by low thermal conductivity. But insects do not stay in their home for the winter, they never return to it.
Preventive measures against annoying neighbors
Paper wasps are troublesome neighbors. They spoil fruits on trees, bite people, and importunately climb on sweet food. To reduce the likelihood of their settlement near the house or under its roof, it is advisable to destroy the nest. Knowing what the wasps do in winter, you can safely cut off the structure and burn it. At this time, you do not risk getting a bite from a stinging insect. Females do not settle in the old nest, but build a new one in the usual place. If you treat the area where the building was located with an unpleasantly smelling composition (kerosene, engine oil, dichlorvos), then the uterus will fly away to look for a more suitable shelter.
To deprive wintering wasps of shelter on the site, certain work should be done:
- collect and burn dry leaves;
- remove rotten stumps, cut trees;
- do not leave boards, sheets of slate on the ground, under them insects seek shelter for the winter;
- pour compost heaps with boiling water;
- you can start preparing the material for the traps that will be needed to protect the crop.
Fighting stinging insects after the onset of cold weather is absolutely safe. They are in a state of diapause until April-May. Only with the onset of heat (+14 0) will the queens wake up and start creating a new colony. Preventive measures will help reduce the number of insects surviving until spring.
Belonged to Louis XIV, King of France, did not lie down for five years. He slept standing up, and supported his head with his tusks, which he thrust into two holes he had hollowed out in the stone wall of the pen. The elephant of Louis XIV became a celebrity and the subject of much controversy among naturalists.
How can this strange behavior of the elephant be explained? In all likelihood, the fact that he was alone, and there was no other elephant that would stand on the clock during his sleep. Both in the wild and in captivity, male elephants put up sentries for the duration of their sleep. One American circus had 35 male elephants. Five of them always dozed standing up while the rest slept on the ground. About every half hour, two of the sentries lay down on the ground to sleep. They were immediately replaced by two other elephants. This is a sensible precaution. It takes a long time for a lying elephant to get up. In case of danger, awake elephants can always repel an attack.
Elephants, apparently, generally lie down only for a short time: for one and a half to four hours a day.
Animals, just like us, need sleep. But sleep in animals is not always associated with such conveniences as in humans.
How do birds sleep
Birds that spend the night not on tree branches practically sleep standing up. Why don't they fall to the ground? Birds have a long, about the same length as the bird's leg, tendon associated with a strong muscle. When the bird lands, the tendon is pulled, acting on the fingers, and they are compressed, wrapping around the branch. This mechanism is very reliable. It happens that dead birds are found on the branches of trees: they do not fall, because even after death their fingers continue to firmly grasp the branch.
Many birds sleep with their heads under their wings and their feathers up to protect them from the cold. Herons and storks often sleep standing on one leg. Originally, some parrots sleep in South America. They hang upside down, clinging to a branch with one foot. Some swifts sleep in a large ball.
The sleep of birds is associated with some special metabolic issues. In birds, the exchange is very intense. The normal temperature of birds is 42 C, that is, the temperature that a person has only with a serious illness. During sleep, the chemical processes in the body of birds slow down, and the body temperature drops to 20 C.
Many water birds sleep "afloat". Often ducks and swans are trapped in ice: during their sleep, the water around them freezes. Seagulls also sleep on the water. It is claimed that they can fall asleep for a short while in flight. The ability to sleep in flight is also attributed to birds that can make long flights, such as albatrosses. This may be true, but albatrosses no doubt spend most of their sleep on the water. Some animals sleep underwater.
How do mammals sleep
The zoologist Lockley described sleep, observations of which he carried out in one aquarium in Europe. A pair of seals slowly sank to the bottom of a two-meter-deep pool. The female closed her eyes and fell asleep. After a few minutes, she began to rise, making barely noticeable movements with her tail and front fins. “Her eyes were closed as she reached the surface and began to inhale loudly,” writes Lockley. - After about sixteen deep breaths, she closed the nasal openings and again sank to the bottom. Her eyes were closed during the entire breathing period - about one minute. There is no doubt that she was sleeping all this time.
She went down, remained at the bottom for five and a quarter minutes, then rose again. This was repeated twelve times. She did not open her eyes. The male did the same. The two seals slept for half an hour, rising and falling in the water until some sharp sound disturbed them.
Only the higher ones love comfort during sleep and spend a lot of time making up the bed. So, with the onset of evening, gorillas look for a place overgrown with vines, and begin to prepare their beds. They bend young branches, intertwine them and build a springy platform. On this platform they lay branches and leaves, which serve as a mattress on which they sleep peacefully and comfortably.
Orangutans usually roost in the tops of trees. Unlike gorillas, they prefer individual beds. Orangutans like to sleep in the fork of branches, among dense foliage. They fill the fork with branches covered with leaves. Moreover, the sharp, broken ends of the branches they stick out. The finished bed has a diameter of 1.2 to 1.5 meters.
Do animals dream
The behavior of many sleeping animals suggests that they are having dreams, and not always good ones. Elephants seem to have nightmares when they trumpet in their sleep. Elephants sometimes snore loudly.
Do insects sleep
Insects, as can be seen in the photographs taken by entomologist Schremmer, an employee of the Vienna Zoological Institute, sleep in a variety of, sometimes, from our point of view, very uncomfortable positions.
Many solitary and some types of wasps in a dream take different bizarre positions. In the evening, they climb up the stem of the plant or sit on the very edge of the leaf and, finding a suitable place, capture it with their mandibles. The grip of insects is so strong that they can even pull their legs up to the abdomen: they don’t need them now anyway.
Sleep often brings the body of an insect into a state of cataleptic rigidity. Some bees in such a suspended state can sleep for several hours or even several days.
The road wasp occupies an unusual position in a dream. Attached to the stalk of a blade of grass with paws, and often with mandibles, she wraps her body around it.
The habits of male swarm bees are peculiar. At night, they usually flock in groups of up to forty individuals to some plant. Before going to bed, everyone makes an evening toilet - they clean themselves. The first rays of the sun wake up all this sleepy company.
The famous naturalist Hudson removed the sleeping grass from the stalk and put it back again. The legs of the butterfly immediately wrapped around the stalk. If a sleeping butterfly is lifted from the grass and thrown into the air, it will glide with fixed wings and cling to any object.
Even the always active ants sleep. Here is how Julien Huxley describes the dream of some ants: “As a bed, they choose a small depression in the ground and fit there, pressing their legs tightly to the body. When they wake up (after about three hours of rest), their behavior is extremely similar to that of a person who has just woken up. They stretch their head and legs to their full length and shake them frequently. Their jaws open wide as if they are yawning."
P.S. What else are British scientists talking about: that sleeping animals could become the emblem of such a thing as, for example, plastic bags. And what, for sure, plastic bags in bulk on delivax.com.ua with the image of sleeping pandas, elephants and would be in demand.
Sleep is an integral part of our life, critically important for the body. We know for sure that humans and animals need sleep. But when the eye falls on a fly buzzing on the window pane, we are no longer so sure and often ask ourselves the question “Are insects sleeping or not?”.
Yes, insects need sleep too! The main "culprit" of sleep in insects is the presence of their central nervous system. Of course, this does not mean that the housefly, which had previously been flying all over the house, suddenly lies on its side and falls asleep for six hours. Her dream will look a little different: for a while, the insect will just sit motionless on a table, wall, or even on the ceiling. And you won’t even think that at this time the little insect is sleeping.
The fact is that every living creature sleeps differently: a person, for example, can only sleep lying down, giraffes and elephants sleep standing up, and bats generally upside down. In addition, the duration of sleep in all living creatures is completely different: the same giraffe sleeps only 2 hours a day, and the bat sleeps all 20. In insects, the duration of sleep also varies - from several minutes to several hours, while the same fly can sleep even on the wall or ceiling. But there is something that unites the sleep of all living beings - this is a slow reaction to external stimuli.
If scientists have the opportunity to connect brain activity sensors to a large animal or person and determine when the creature is sleeping, then in the case of insects, it remains only to monitor their behavior and reaction to external influences. This is how two independent teams of scientists from the Institute of Neurology in California and the University of Pennsylvania proved that insects can sleep too.
The experiment was carried out on fruit flies and consisted in the fact that during the night one container with insects was constantly shaken, not allowing the flies to sit still. The other container was unaffected and the insects were normal. After a sleepless night, the scientists finally left the first container alone, and the flies inside immediately and simultaneously reduced their activity. At the same time, when shaking the jar, the insects did not react immediately, but with some delay - as if a sleeping person was shaken by the shoulder, he would not wake up immediately.
The left container was subjected to external influence for a long time - it was regularly shaken, not allowing the flies to rest.
These results were obtained from two independent studies at once and were repeated many times to exclude the possibility of coincidence. Moreover, in a detailed study, experts noticed that the duration of sleep in flies depends on age: young individuals sleep less than old ones. For the sake of interest, scientists even sprayed caffeine in a container and were surprised to find that it acts on fruit flies in the same way as on humans, making them stay awake longer.
This is how bees sleep. According to the author of the video, this Anthidium punctatum bee remained motionless (sleeping) for a long time, wrapping its jaws around a blade of grass.
Subsequently, similar experiments were carried out not only on fruit flies, but also on other insects (for example, bees), and they all confirmed that insects can sleep.
Photographer Miroslaw Swietek captured these unique shots of insects in the early hours of the morning. At this time, insects are covered with morning dew, but are in a dream, so they can be easily photographed by bringing the camera lens as close as possible. True, according to Miroslav, it is incredibly difficult to find their wet grass.
Any living organism has a certain life resource, which is intensively consumed in the process of its life. To replenish vitality, it is necessary not only to eat, but also to rest. That is why sleep is an integral part of all living beings. During sleep, powerful recovery processes take place in the body, both physical and emotional. Therefore, everyone should sleep, and people, and animals and insects. However, looking at insects, you might think that they do not sleep at all. The same fly, for example, can lead an active lifestyle both day and night, annoying with its annoying buzzing. When does she sleep?
The fact that insects need to sleep is an undeniable fact. After all, they also have a central nervous system that needs rest. It is clear that a fly cannot, like a person, lie down in bed and fall asleep. Insects sleep differently. They fall into a trance for a while, freeze and remain motionless. Looking at a fly sitting on the ceiling, you won’t even think that it is sleeping. But actually it is.
All living beings sleep differently. The person goes to bed and falls asleep. A huge elephant sleeps standing up, and a bat rests upside down. The duration of sleep is also different for everyone. A person needs six hours of sleep to recover. But the duration of a bat's sleep is twenty hours. A huge giraffe sleeps even less, only two hours. A similar situation is observed in insects. They can sleep from several hours to several minutes. It does not matter where and how, even if sitting on the ceiling. During sleep, all vital processes in their bodies slow down, they become immune to external stimuli.
It is not possible to track the brain activity of insects during their sleep. Man has not invented such devices. You can only conduct external observation of their behavior, but study the reaction to external stimuli. To prove that insects also sleep, scientists placed them in two containers, one of which was subjected to constant shaking, and the second was at rest. In the shaking container, the insects were active and calmed down only after the shaking stopped. With repeated shaking, their reaction to external influences was extremely slow. The insects of the second container, having spent the night calmly, instantly reacted to external irritation.
As a result of a number of such experiments, it was revealed that insects also sleep. At the same time, the duration of their sleep depends not only on the intensity and time of external influence, but also on the age of the insects themselves. The older the age, the longer the sleep. At the same time, external stimuli, such as caffeine, also affect the duration of sleep. If you spray it in a container with insects, they will sleep less.
All insects sleep differently. A honey bee can sleep on a blade of grass. At the same time, she wraps her paws around her, and remains motionless for some time.
And so, we came to the conclusion that sleep in insects is somewhat different from sleep in our usual representation. They have it associated with a state of trance or stupor. The insect is motionless, and sluggishly reacts to external stimuli. Despite this, their nervous system is awake. They hear sounds, rustles, extraneous movements, and can even determine the change of day and night. If external stimuli are associated with danger, the insect wakes up instantly. For sleep, it chooses the place where it feels comfortable and safe. However, some of their species, such as butterflies, prefer to sleep in groups. Most likely, their behavior is due to the need to protect themselves from predators. It's easier to do this as part of a group.
