Just like people, bees are sleeping for 5-8 hours a day. Sleep habits of bees studied in 1983 scholar Walter Kaiser. Watching the hives, the Kaiser noticed at first, start to bend legs of a bee, bowing her body and head to the floor. Then he stopped moving antennae. Sometimes the bee fell to the side, and some insects in the dream were holding each other’s feet.
Why bees sleep? Like people, bees sleep brings rest and refreshment. Scientists decided to find out how to behave in these insects, deprived of sleep. The status of forager bees after a night without sleep (the fault of the researchers) left much to be desired.
First, there were problems with communication. Instead of having to perform a waggle dance with incredible precision, sleepy bees have made a clumsy movement and could not show comrades the way to the food source. They strayed from the path, wasting time and energy. Is suffered whole colony. Exhausted bees was difficult to find my way back to the hive with the flower of the field — it took a long time for orientation in the sky and the surrounding objects. Many are lost and never come back.
As you know, people have a deep sleep consolidates memories by transferring them from short-time to long term memory. The same happens with bees. Though their bodies are inactive during deep sleep, the brain remains awake. Proceedings of the previous day are reactivated in the brain, fragile memories stabiliziruemost and turn into permanent knowledge, access to which can be obtained in the next day or even in the distant future.
Learning that bees sleep, scientists wondered — do they see dreams? People have dreams associated with REM sleep. Dreams see mammals, birds and reptiles are groups of animals, from which there are stages of sleep with a rapid movement of the eyeballs. However, recent studies have shown that dreams during deep sleep, in which we are plunged bees. Consequently, our striped friends can dream!
