A researcher noticed surprising behavior She had spiders jumping in her backyard during the period of home quarantine due to the outbreak of the “Covid-19” epidemic, and this raised an unthinkable question in her mind, “Do spiders dream while they sleep?”
One day and while on a picnic for recreation In the backyard of her house in Germany, ecologist Daniela Roebler noticed a strange behavior in some jumping spiders while they were sleeping. The spiders showed movements similar to the movement of humans during their sleep. some were sleeping in silk pockets; Others are hanging by a single thread upside down. The spiders’ legs were folded inward and twitched repeatedly during their sleep; This sparked Robler’s curiosity as to whether dreams were the cause of these tremors. Here I decided to create an incubator for spiders inside the house in order to study this phenomenon.
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The legs of the jumping spider tremble and contract, as shown here, during a deep sleep stage similar to the stage of rapid eye movement sleep in humans. Video: Daniela C. Roessler
Since it is not possible to perform brain scans on spiders As with humans to study sleep patterns, Robbler has acquired small spiders that have not yet acquired pigment on their exoskeleton; This allows it to look directly into the spider’s eyes. Armed with a night-cap camera and a magnifying glass, she photographed the spiders in their sleep, focusing on the eyes and body movement.
“Sometimes a spider is hanging in peace with its legs folded, and suddenly it is unfurling at once. I can only explain it as having seen a nightmare.” Daniela Robler, Environmental Scientist
Robler came to the conclusion that The jumping spiders enjoy the stage of “rapid eye movement” (or REM) sleep, which is the deepest stage of sleep for humans. It is as if he is training to control his organs during his sleep. “Sometimes a spider is hanging in peace with its legs folded, and suddenly it is spreading all at once, I can only explain that it had a nightmare,” Roebler says.
If it is scientifically proven that the movement of the eyes of spiders and the trembling of their bodies, Because they are immersed in deep sleep, or “rapid eye movement sleep”, this will change our understanding of the evolution of spiders, as we have not yet seen any invertebrates that have a stage of REM sleep. Roebler’s study inspired other scientists interested in jumping spiders to embark on a journey to decode spiders’ sleep and explore whether they respond to external stimuli during their sleep. So a scientist in the US state of Massachusetts has developed a special system to monitor the brain activity of a jumping spider, which may prove that it actually sees dreams in its sleep.