How to wake a spider<\/p>\n
Portia fimbriata, which is found across Northern Australia, is a “dream species” for studying sleep, study co-author Nadja Geiger said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“She is diurnal, highly visual and famously clever,” Ms Geiger said.<\/p>\n
“She also has a very clear night-time resting posture, sleeping upside down in a little web \u2026 this makes sleep easier to identify and study.”<\/p>\n
The team recorded the arachnids throughout the night, then carefully analysed the footage to identify the stages.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The spiders groomed themselves while they snoozed and drooped down slowly over the course of the night in a phase the researchers called quiescent.<\/p>\n
This was followed by a REM-like sleep stage, complete with leg curls, eye movements and arm twitching as the spiders dosed.<\/p>\n
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Once the researchers had observed these two different phases, they could see what happened when they tried to wake the spider up.<\/p>\n
“A hallmark sign of sleep is \u2026 [responding] slower or not at all to external stimuli,” Ms Geiger said.<\/p>\n
We bust five myths about the iconic daddy-long-legs<\/a><\/p>\n You probably have a daddy-long-legs in your house right now \u2013 but there’s so much about them that is commonly misunderstood<\/p>\n They woke the spiders up with a loud noise while they were still for more than 15 minutes in the quiescent stage, as well as when they showed signs of REM-like sleep and when they were visibly awake.<\/p>\n Similar to humans who have been woken from a nap, it took the spiders longer to respond when they were in this quiescent and REM-like state.<\/p>\n “This effect was particularly strong during the REM-like phase,” Ms Geiger said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Responses were significantly delayed, and some spiders did not respond at all.”<\/p>\n Spider sleep a (not so) controversial idea<\/p>\n Thomas White, an entomologist at the University of Sydney who studies invertebrate behaviour, said some people might think associating similar behaviours to animals that were so distantly removed from us was controversial. \u00a0<\/p>\n “With spiders, you’re talking about animals that have diverged 500 million years ago from all other vertebrates,” Dr White said.<\/p>\n The fringed jumping spider (Portia fimbriata) can grow up to 10 millimetres long. (iNaturalist fringed spider<\/a>\/Kurtese Templeton<\/a>\/CC BY-NC 4.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n But he noted that scientists were becoming less hesitant as evidence mounted that similar behaviours occurred.<\/p>\n “We readily see our dog lying down and its eyes are twitching and it’s kicking its little paws. Essentially what [the researchers] are showing here is that something similar,” he said.<\/p>\n “Yes, [spiders] diverged a very long time ago, but if we’re willing to extend that inference to our dogs, our cats, or even animals that are quite unlike us like reptiles, then what’s stopping us from extending that inference \u2026 in animals that are very unlike us?”<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/c59468d163da3e998f5714ddb9077574.jpeg\")
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