Penguins have long captivated us with their cute tuxedo-like appearance and wobbly walk. Its their sleeping habits that have just recently stunned researchers. According to a brand-new study, these seabirds are champion power nappers, going to sleep countless times in a single day.
These micronaps last just a couple of seconds, but the penguins make up for the lost sleep by stacking these brief snooze moments. Despite this fragmented sleep, they build up about 11 hours of rest daily. This pattern permits them to vigilantly guard their nests versus predators.
” Humans can not sustain this state, but penguins can,” lead researcher Paul-Antoine Libourel from Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre told The Guardian. “Sleep is much more complicated in its diversity than what we check out about in a lot of books.”
Chinstrap Penguin (Pygoscelis Antarcticus), Antarctic Peninsula. Credit: Flickr, GRID-Arendal.
The Puzzle of Microsleep
Using electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring that scanned penguin brains and continuous video footage, Libourel and coworkers showed that penguins experience highly fragmented sleep despite their position. They can doze off standing or resting in microsleeps, lasting just four seconds.
These micronaps last only a few seconds, however the penguins make up for the lost sleep by stacking these brief snooze minutes. From the 20-hour slumbers of brown bats to the brief two-hour rest of giraffes, sleep patterns vary wildly throughout the animal kingdom.
They clock in around 600 short bouts of slow-wave sleep per hour, the scientists discovered. This sleep pattern, a constant cycle of short sleep and wakefulness, may be an adaptation to their tough environment.
They clock in around 600 short bouts of slow-wave sleep per hour, the scientists found. The African bush elephant averages only 2 hours of sleep per day. In fruit flies, sleep requirements vary by sex, with males needing over 10 women and hours handling with as little as 15 minutes.
The scientists think these microsleeps use essential benefits, perhaps assisting in cellular maintenance or synaptic modifications. This hypothesis requires screening, these findings provide insights into the diverse sleep patterns in the animal kingdom.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Science shows that essentially all animals need sleep. Nevertheless, not all animals sleep the same. From the 20-hour sleeps of brown bats to the quick two-hour rest of giraffes, sleep patterns vary hugely across the animal kingdom.
The African bush elephant averages just 2 hours of sleep per day. In fruit flies, sleep requirements vary by sex, with males requiring over 10 females and hours handling with as little as 15 minutes.
The findings appeared in the journal Sleep Advances.
In 2019, Dr. Libourels team started a special expedition to King George Island, near Antarctica, where they studied a colony of over 2,700 breeding pairs over 10 days. Throughout this time, they never saw a single penguin sleep for a prolonged period that we might recognize as “slumber”.
Developments in innovation have additional exposed inconsistencies in between sleep in captivity and the wild. For instance, sloths in zoos sleep nearly two times as long as their wild equivalents.
Given that the penguins are more vulnerable throughout sleep than numerous other animals, their unmatched level of sleep fragmentation showcases an extreme adjustment to their environment.
But among all these creatures, the sleep patterns of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus) are a few of the most distinct and intriguing. Researchers were initially blown away by the observation that penguins never appear to slip into deep sleep states throughout the day like human beings do.
