Scientists Confirm Spiders Dream, Answering the Question Nobody Who Wanted to Sleep Tonight Asked

Science has finally answered the question that kept nobody up at night, and in doing so has guaranteed that everybody will be up tonight. Spiders sleep. Some of them dream. At least one of them is doing it upside down, directly above somebody's pillow.

Researchers at the University of Bonn report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the Australian jumping spider Portia fimbriata has true, regulated sleep with two distinct stages, including a REM-like state of darting eyes and twitching legs. It is the first comprehensive confirmation of sleep behavior in a spider. The previous official position was that spiders simply waited in the dark, which, frankly, was the more comforting theory.

Portia is about the size of a one-euro coin and eats other spiders. It hunts by plucking their webs to imitate a trapped insect, making it the only predator that catfishes. Scientists call this intelligence. Other spiders call it the last message they ever answered.

To study it, the team placed spiders in plastic dishes 12 centimeters across and filmed them with infrared cameras for days, the most expensive way anyone has ever watched something do nothing. Then they played a sharp, piercing sound. Sleeping spiders took up to 3 seconds longer to react, putting them roughly level with a teenager hearing the word "dishes."

Then came the cruelty phase. According to Science, the researchers released more than 20 flies into each spider's enclosure overnight. Imagine trying to sleep while your breakfast buzzes around the bedroom asking if you're up. The next day the spiders rested about an extra hour. ScienceAlert reports they also logged nearly 80 percent more REM-like behavior, catching up through more episodes rather than longer ones. Sleep debt, it turns out, is universal. Spiders just pay it off without a banking app.

Now, the twitching. Eight legs, curling. Eyes, darting. Somewhere in a lab dish in Germany, a cannibal is dreaming. Nobody knows about what. Possibly the Australian bush. Possibly a web that never fights back. Possibly showing up to an exam without having molted.

All of this was done without measuring brain activity, using only behavior and enormous amounts of video. Nobody has invented an EEG cap for a head the size of a lentil, and the spider is not volunteering for the fitting.

The team now plans to study sleep across the whole diversity of spiders, including how artificial light at night affects them. Good news: the spider in your bathroom may soon be diagnosed with insomnia, giving the two of you something to talk about at 3 a.m.

Asked whether the spiders are actually dreaming, researcher Daniela Roessler told Science: "That's the dream." Scientists, like spiders, are patient. They will sit in the dark for years, waiting for one small twitch.

So sleep tight. Something in the corner already is.