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Every animal with a brain needs sleep – and even some animals without a brain need sleep. Humans sleep, birds sleep, whales sleep and even jellyfish sleep.
Sleep “Even though it’s really very risky,” said Paul-Antoine Libourel, a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon, “it’s universal.” France,
When animals nod, they are most vulnerable to sneaky predators. But despite the risks, the need for sleep is so strong that no creature can give it up completely, even if it is extremely inconvenient.
Animal Those that navigate extreme conditions and environments have evolved to sleep in extreme ways – for example, stealing seconds at a time during round-the-clock parenting, napping on the wing during long migrations, and even dozing off while swimming.
For a long time, scientists could only make educated guesses about when wild animals were sleeping by observing when they remained quiet and closed their eyes. But in recent years, tiny trackers and helmets that measure brain waves — miniature versions of the equipment in human sleep labs — have allowed researchers to glimpse for the first time the diverse and sometimes spectacular ways wild animals nap.
“We’re finding that sleep is really flexible in response to ecological demands,” said animal sleep research expert Niels Rattenborg at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany.
Call it the emerging science of “excessive sleep.”
Chinstrap penguins and their ‘microsleeps’
take the chinstrap penguin in Antarctica He studies Libourel.
These penguins mate for life and share parenting duties – one bird cares for the egg or small brown fluffy chick to keep it warm and safe, while the other swims around to catch fish for the family meal. They then switch roles – continuing this continuous labor for weeks.
penguin Parents face a common challenge: getting enough sleep while keeping a close eye on their newborns.
They survive by taking thousands of naps a day – each nap lasting only 4 seconds on average.
As Won Young Lee, a biologist at the Korea Polar Research Institute, says, these short “microsleeps” appear to be enough to keep penguin parents in charge of caring for them in their crowded, noisy colonies for weeks.
When a clumsy neighbor passes by or predatory sea birds approach, the parent penguin blinks to attract attention and soon blinks again, his chin rocking against his chest like a drowsy driver.
Naps increase. Each penguin sleeps a total of 11 hours a day, scientists found by measuring the brain activity of 14 adults over 11 days on Antarctica’s King George Island.
To remain mostly alert, yet still blink enough, penguins have developed a keen ability to function even in highly fragmented sleep – at least during the breeding season.
Researchers can now see when one hemisphere of the brain – or both at once – is sleeping.
Frigate birds take a nap with half their brain while in flight
Poets, sailors, and ornithologists have long wondered whether birds that fly for months at a time actually have wing flaps.
In some cases, the answer is yes — as scientists discovered when they attached devices measuring brain-wave activity to the heads of large sea birds that nest in the Galapagos Islands, called great frigatebirds.
While flying, frigatebirds can sleep with half their brain at a time. The other half remains semi-vigilant with one eye still keeping an eye out for obstacles in their flight path.
This enables the birds to fly for several weeks without touching the ground or water, which would damage their delicate, non-water-repellent feathers.
Frigatebirds can’t perform complex maneuvers – flapping, exploring or diving – with only half of their brain. When they dive for prey, they must be fully awake. But during flight, they have evolved to sleep while gliding and circling overhead on large gusts of hot air that keep them aloft with minimal effort.
Returning to nests in trees or bushes, frigatebirds change their nap routines – they are more likely to sleep with their entire brain at once and for much longer periods. This suggests that their sleep during flight is a specific adaptation to extended flight, Rattenborg said.
Some other animals have similar sleeping tricks. Dolphins can sleep with half their brain at a time while swimming. Scientists say that some other birds, including swifts and albatross, can also sleep in flight.
Other researchers found that frigatebirds can fly 255 miles (410 kilometers) per day for more than 40 days before touching the ground – a feat that would not be possible without being able to sleep on the wing.
Elephant falls into deep sleep while diving deep
On land, life is easy for the 5,000-pound (2,268 kg) northern elephant seal. But in the ocean, sleep is dangerous – sharks and killer whales that hunt seals lurk.
These seals go on extended foraging trips of up to eight months to catch fish, squid, rays and other marine snacks, repeatedly diving to depths of several hundred feet (meters).
Each deep dive can last about 30 minutes. And for about a third of that time, the seals may be asleep, according to research led by Jessica Kendall-Barr of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Kendall-Barr’s team designed a neoprene headcap similar to a swimming cap, with devices to detect motion and seal brain activity during diving, and retrieved the cap with logged data when the seals returned to beaches in Northern California.
The 13 female seals studied tended to sleep during the deepest part of their dives, when they were below the depth where predators typically patrol.
That sleep included both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep. During REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, the seals were temporarily paralyzed – just like humans during this deep sleep stage – and their diving speed changed. Instead of a controlled downward sliding motion, they sometimes turn upside down and rotate in what researchers call a “sleep spiral” during REM sleep.
Over a 24-hour period, the seals in the ocean slept a total of about two hours. (Back at the beach, they spent an average of about 10 hours.)
spiral evolution of sleep
Scientists are still learning about all the reasons we sleep — and how much sleep we really need.
It’s unlikely that any tired human would try these extreme animal sleep hacks. But learning more about how diverse nomads can be in the wild reveals the resilience of some species. Nature has evolved to make it possible to close the eyes even in the most uncertain circumstances.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content.