Northwestern’s Science in Society talks to Ravi Allada, a neurobiology and physiology professor, about fruit flies:
Do flies really sleep?
Yes, really. They exhibit all of the behaviors that we associate with sleep—they stop moving, become unresponsive to stimuli, and so on. In fact, if you deprive a fly of sleep one day, it will try to make up for it the next. So why do we all need sleep? This is the big question. And a better understanding the mechanisms behind sleep will help answer it.
Interview’s fairly short, but really good.