Sleeping Habits

Occasionally I'll bump the tank or something and I'll see Shredder act surprised, or like wake up from sleeping. I know that scorpions are nocturnal and most nocturnal animals sleep during the day. So do scorpions do the same? I don't mean sleeping like humans do as that's clearly not the case, but more like Dolphins where they shut down half of the brain. Do scorpions do something like that, or is the brain too simple to do that? Has this not been studied or not? If not those, then how do they "sleep", because all animals need to sleep right?

Even if you don't know I would appreciate it if you would offer your opinions, thank you.

Well, I am basing this on my experience with my tarantulas, so I can not be sure...but, even when my tarantulas are moving around, if I bump into the tank by accident they (well, my G. rosea, not my B. smithi) will startle and jump simply because they didn't expect the large movement. However, at other times I've noticed that my tarantulas will lay down completely and let their legs go limp, at this point they won't respond to much, and this seems to be the closest state they have to "sleeping" in terms of how we define "sleep".

I'm not sure on this, but basically the reason vertebrates sleep is to repair any damage to the brain that has occurred during wakefulness, so, since inverts do not have "brains" like we do, I wouldn't think they "sleep" in the way we do, but I imagine even inverts need downtime...the only problem is I am not sure what "sleep" would do for an invert..? What would the function be, you know?


Well, that's my faulty logic that I'm sure someone will correct

I always thought that sleep was a way to focus on growth, the immune system, and a way to gain more energy. In scorpions however, there is no immune system and growth is taken care of by molting, so that means that really the purpose of sleep would be to up the energy level?

Perocore said:

the reason vertebrates sleep is to repair any damage to the brain that has occurred during wakefulness

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ShredderEmp said:

so that means that really the purpose of sleep would be to up the energy level?

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Oh really..........Thats just how misinformation and myths start...Someone takes an uneducated (unless of course you are a neurologist) guess...That guess doesn't get challenged and before you can say bobs your uncle you're reading it as fact all over the place

So i'm challenging your remarks and stating for the record that your guesses are nothing more than mundane discussion based on nothing tangible.

To replace your ideas i'll state my own mundane thoughts....Humans haven't even worked out how the human brain works yet..how the sum of it's parts can produce consciousness....Traditionally we've said that insects have no consciousness or awareness because they brains are simply to small to house the required amount of neurons for complicated thought patterns........This is traditionally said as being fact when in fact it's only a theory...the same as soooooooo many other so called facts.

Do insects sleep..................................................don't know
Do insects dream.................................................don't know
If they do sleep, why...........................................don't know
if they do dream, what do they dream of.................don't know
Will we ever learn the answers to these questions.....maybe, maybe not

I know that scorpions are nocturnal and most nocturnal animals sleep during the day. So do scorpions do the same?

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I did a little bit of reading on this topic and discovered that a lot research has, in fact, been done on sleep in scorpions, as well as other arthropods. How to define sleep is complicated, but there is evidence that scorpions experience a form of rest resembling sleep. One paper[SUP][1] [/SUP] monitored captive scorpions 24 hours a day for 11 days, noting 3 different states of activity: “activity” (where the scorpion moved about), “alert immobility” (where the scorpion remains still but responds to external stimuli), and “relaxed immobility” (where the scorpion was both immobile and demonstrated an elevated threshold for response to external stimuli). They saw that during relaxed immobility, the scorpion not only required additional stimuli to become alert but also showed a significantly diminished heart rate (measured by implanting electrodes into the scorpion above the heart). Additionally, sleep deprivation during thenormal resting period caused a compensatory increase in rest after the deprivation conditions were lifted, similar to how you need more sleep after staying up all night.

So, the short answer is that scorpions do have a resting state resembling sleep, but calling it sleep is complicated for a number of reasons. There is a lot more work on this topic, but I figure this should adequately answer your question.


[HR][/HR]
References:

[1] Tobler, Irene, and Jaqueline Stalder. "Rest in the scorpion—a sleep-like state?."Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology 163.2 (1988): 227-235.

There, that was better

THANK YOU. At first I was going to reply do the first question that I ment that as a question, so I logged on and found the second post I don't need to say that now, do I? Haha.

I find that research very interesting. I guess they do sleep in a way huh. Now I know not to disks turn Jim too much. Thanks Again veliravia.

I also remember reading a couple of studies suggesting level of intelligence doesn't rely on brain size alone, but that it may be the brain size in relation to the animal that matters a lot. ...Dang!, I hate when I miss-spell 'intelligence'!

That's a good point, but than why does the Emu have a brain the size of a walnut?

I've heard it's much smaller than a walnut, they are truly birdbrains and they are not 'smart' at all, going by what I've heard anyway.

Brain size=body size may be true for only some animals though, so hopefully scorpions follow that rule if true.

That wasn't my point, many big animals have a small brains. I was pointing out that some science studies so far have shown that big animals with small brains aren't very smart even though their brains may be bigger than a rat brain, and rats are pretty smart. I wasn't saying that bigger animals have bigger brains but only that "some science shows intelligence may have a lot to do with brain to body size ratio", that's all. In others words, if a rat had the brain the size of a walnut, since the brain to body ratio would be huge, maybe it would be more intelligent than humans even though our brains are larger. Of course there is always the brain structure of different species to consider so in that sense it's really not a good example, a whole other topic there.

I was researching this the other day. Turns out invertebrates do sleep.

Galapoheros said:

That wasn't my point, many big animals have a small brains. I was pointing out that some science studies so far have shown that big animals with small brains aren't very smart even though their brains may be bigger than a rat brain, and rats are pretty smart. I wasn't saying that bigger animals have bigger brains but only that "some science shows intelligence may have a lot to do with brain to body size ratio", that's all. In others words, if a rat had the brain the size of a walnut, since the brain to body ratio would be huge, maybe it would be more intelligent than humans even though our brains are larger. Of course there is always the brain structure of different species to consider so in that sense it's really not a good example, a whole other topic there.

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That's a good point. I think brain structure would be a major variable to that theory.

I wonder if brain size corresponds to the level or type of sleep they go into?

You're right though, this is kind of getting a little bit too far away from sleeping.

I think that's a really good question there. The question makes me think of another question anyway. It makes me think that animals that depend on instinct, ones having extremely hard-wired instinctive neuro processes don't need much sleep at all, but those that require more learning to survive in an environment need more sleep. It's been a hunch of mine that sleep is extremely beneficial to animals capable of higher learning. I've read something along those lines and I go by personal experience also but I can't prove any of it. It's just that when I tend to "sleep on something" I'm trying to learn, I sometimes remember my dreams about it and can do what I try to learn better the next day, it's like things are being sorted out during sleep at some level. Or is that I was just tired the previous day(?) I don't know but I really do think sleep is very important, I don't see how that would relate to inverts though if there's any truth to it. I wonder why they would need to go into some kind of dormant state. I know that in mammals the body goes into a different mode, to balance out chemical processes in digestion, hormones, sugar, salts, things like that during sleep, maybe it's the same for inverts.

Galapoheros said:

I think that's a really good question there. The question makes me think of another question anyway. It makes me think that animals that depend on instinct, ones having extremely hard-wired instinctive neuro processes don't need much sleep at all, but those that require more learning to survive in an environment need more sleep. It's been a hunch of mine that sleep is extremely beneficial to animals capable of higher learning. I've read something along those lines and I go by personal experience also but I can't prove any of it. It's just that when I tend to "sleep on something" I'm trying to learn, I sometimes remember my dreams about it and can do what I try to learn better the next day, it's like things are being sorted out during sleep at some level. Or is that I was just tired the previous day(?) I don't know but I really do think sleep is very important, I don't see how that would relate to inverts though if there's any truth to it. I wonder why they would need to go into some kind of dormant state. I know that in mammals the body goes into a different mode, to balance out chemical processes in digestion, hormones, sugar, salts, things like that during sleep, maybe it's the same for inverts.

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Good point, maybe.