I often see a long chain of ants walk in my bathroom and kitchen walls. Hundreds walk in line search for what I don’t know, maybe food and water, but I’ve also seen a bunch carry eggs.
This other day I saw them walk much slower than their actual speed. It seemed like a lazy walk, but their path and pattern was as usual. I wondered if they sleep deprived or if they were tired.
So here is what I found, ants obviously sleep. They seem so hardworking, ants walking continuously for hours, but they are not the same group of ants. Some ants sleep for a while, when others take their place. They take turns to sleep but fool us into believing that they are working all day.
Queen ants sleep for 9 hours in a day, just like humans and worker ants sleep for 4 hours, in intervals.
Worker ants more or less take power naps, an average colony would have 3 queen ants and 30 worker ants. 4/5th of the population is active at any point of time.
Those lazy ants that I saw the other day had just woken up, they take some time to get back into action and speed.
Research says, ants might exhibit laziness to reduce their need for food. It reduces their biological activity, thus reducing their food needs.