Episode 57: Do Insects Dream of Electric Bugs?

Let’s begin with an article just talking about human dreams from the Sleep Foundation. What are they and why do we have them?

And then we can look at the connection between animal and human sleep and dreams. What do we know about how other animals sleep and dream? This is largely going to talk about animals we’ve already done a lot of studies on.

And now what about bugs? Do bugs even sleep? This article will talk about if bugs sleep at all and briefly touch on some experiments that were done to test that.

Karen had a real issue talking about the fruit fly, but that’s one bug scientists have really looked into. So do they dream or sleep?

This one is more geared toward a younger audience, but if you want a simplified explanation or if you want to share the topic with your kids, this is the link for you!

This one talks about the importance of sleep in humans but also on invertebrates. Both articles look at what has happened in tests having to do with sleep disruptions and deprivation.

Here we made a brief detour into whether or not insect, specifically flies, have feelings. This came from a question Karen asked in the middle of the episode.

This is an article that has an interview with RÖẞLER, the scientist that conducted the experiment on the tiny jumping spiders. It’s great to hear directly from the person who worked on it. Plus it does make mention of the question M had about animals without eyes or who are non-visual having dreams.

And this one is about bees! Right in the middle of this episode, we have a break from the serious talk to look at some sleeping bees and talk about how much bees love naps.