do ants ever sleep & how big is there brain?

Answer 1

I saw on a National Geographic filler that ants don't sleep.
Ants don't have large brains, they don't need them as they would be wasted.....brains are very expensive energetically to maintain so animals don't want more than is required.
Ant colonies work on simple principles to maintain themselves. For example, when a forager ant comes across a prey item and goes back to the colony to recruit help the number of foragers is not determined by the colony but by the size of the prey item.
When the prey starts to be moved by the ants it is a signal that no more recruits are required. This shows that no conscious effort or knowledge is required by the colony, ants therefore don't need intelligence to carry out what on the surface may seem like intelligent decision making....simple brains.

Answer 2

No it can't be considered the same thing as dead as our bodies do function as you yourself mentioned. The brain is still having a job making sure everything is in working order. We may be in our subconscious when we don't dream or the brain has decided to press pause on the main feature which would be the dream. Sometimes we don't have dreams because we need greater rest, perhaps you worked too hard or hurt yourself or slept badly the other night. The body turns its focus on healing and restoring, perhaps because there isn't enough energy to come up with a dream or maybe our body doesn't want a dream to upset us? No one really knows I am just pulling out my own theories. If you don't wake up one could make up the argument that your soul goes to heaven and in essence you are your soul so you would know that you had died. Sorry there is no straightforward answer it is all rather speculation even now in terms of the brain and what happens and why. I hope I was of some help or at least gave you something to think about!

Answer 3

Yes they sleep. Not sure about their brain size but I do know an interesting bit of ant trivia. When an ant dies other ants will always bury the dead ant on the Northeast corner of the anthill. If the ant dies in an ant farm and then you rotate the farm, they will dig up the dead and rebury them in the new Northeast corner. No scientists have been able to figure out why.