Do ants sleep?« Back to Questions List

Entomologists are people who study different kinds of insects and how they are connected to man and the environment. Ants are one of the most interesting insects that are known for its restless activities. There are more than 10,000 species of ants that live everywhere except very cold regions.

More than three thousand kinds of insects are said to live in the ant’s nest. Ants associate themselves with insects like aphids, mealy bugs, beetles that benefit both partners. Ants help improve population growth among the sucking insects. The very existence of Europe’s large blue butterfly is dependent on ants.

The strong jaws of ants called mandibles can crush, cut or tear the food they eat. The food they eat for them goes into their stomach while that they collect for others gets into a kind of stomach called a crop. While others ask for food, they provide them with food from the crop.

Ants too rest for a short while making sure someone else is carrying on with the work they were doing. Within an ant colony, there are worker ants, queen ants and male ants. As the name suggests worker ants do most of the jobs while the only job of queen ants is to lay eggs. These workers are female and they take care of the queen and her babies. Male ants are only for mating with the queen and most often they die after mating.

Ants do rest but only for a very short while. The worker ants take very short power naps about 250 times a day. These power naps last only a minute which accounts for a total of about 4 hours of sleep a day. The queen ants fall asleep 90 times a day with a nap time accounting for about 6 minutes. This means they get to sleep for about 9 hours each day. Queen ants live for many more years compared to workers who live only for few months.

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