Daniela Roessler News Today

The wildest dreams

Recently, a behavioral ecologist from the University of Konstanz in Germany published her findings on a sleep study performed on spiders. So, do spiders really dream?

A team of researchers filmed jumping spiders overnight and observed behaviors that mirror rapid eye movement sleep in other species. It helps that baby jumping spiders have translucent exoskeletons.

A team of researchers filmed jumping spiders overnight and observed behaviors that mirror rapid eye movement sleep in other species. It helps that baby jumping spiders have translucent exoskeletons.

Warning arachnophobes: Read no further. We’ll give you time to jump to another story.

A research shows that spiders’ overnight movements look a lot like REM in other species, like dogs or cats twitching in their sleep.

Scientists generally believe that all mammals sleep. But what about snoozing spiders? Behavioural ecologist Daniela Roessler spoke to As It Happens guest host Susan Bonner about her discovery that some might go even deeper.

German researchers say jumping spiders, while asleep, can fall into an REM cycle, the same sort of deep dream-like sleep with rapid eye movement that humans do. 

Spiders might experience dreaming

The night footage of baby jumping spiders showed patterns that looked a lot like sleep cycles with their legs twitching and parts of eyes flickering.