{"id":197655,"date":"2025-12-22T07:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T07:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/197655\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T07:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T07:04:08","slug":"nodding-off-is-dangerous-some-animals-have-evolved-extreme-ways-to-sleep-in-precarious-environments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/197655\/","title":{"rendered":"Nodding off Is Dangerous. Some Animals Have Evolved Extreme Ways to Sleep in Precarious Environments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(AP Illustration \/ Peter Hamlin)<\/p>\n

(AP) \u2013 Every animal with a brain needs sleep \u2014 and even a few without a brain do, too. Humans sleep, birds sleep, whales sleep and even jellyfish sleep.<\/p>\n


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Sleep is universal \u201ceven though it\u2019s actually very risky,\u201d said Paul-Antoine Libourel, a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon in France.<\/p>\n

When animals nod off, they\u2019re most vulnerable to sneaky predators. But despite the risks, the need for sleep is so strong that no creature can skip it altogether, even when it\u2019s highly inconvenient.<\/p>\n

Animals that navigate extreme conditions and environments have evolved to sleep in extreme ways \u2014 for example, stealing seconds at a time during around-the-clock parenting, getting winks on the wing during long migrations and even dozing while swimming.<\/p>\n

For a long time, scientists could only make educated guesses about when wild animals were sleeping, observing when they lay still and closed their eyes. But in recent years, tiny trackers and helmets that measure brain waves \u2014 miniaturized versions of equipment in human sleep labs \u2014 have allowed researchers to glimpse for the first time the varied and sometimes spectacular ways that wild animals snooze.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re finding that sleep is really flexible in response to ecological demands,\u201d said Niels Rattenborg, an animal sleep research specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany.<\/p>\n

Call it the emerging science of \u201cextreme sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinstrap penguins and their \u2018microsleeps\u2019
Take chinstrap penguins in Antarctica that Libourel studies.<\/p>\n

These penguins mate for life and share parenting duties \u2014 with one bird babysitting the egg or tiny gray fluffy chick to keep it warm and safe while the other swims off to fish for a family meal. Then they switch roles \u2014 keeping up this nonstop labor for weeks.<\/p>\n

Penguin parents face a common challenge: getting enough sleep while keeping a close eye on their newborns.<\/p>\n

They survive by taking thousands of catnaps a day \u2014 each averaging just 4 seconds long.<\/p>\n

These short \u201cmicrosleeps,\u201d as Korea Polar Research Institute biologist Won Young Lee calls them, appear to be enough to allow penguin parents to carry out their caregiving duties for weeks within their crowded, noisy colonies.<\/p>\n

When a clumsy neighbor passes by or predatory seabirds are near, the penguin parent blinks to alert attention and soon dozes off again, its chin nodding against its chest, like a drowsy driver.<\/p>\n

The naps add up. Each penguin sleeps for a total of 11 hours per day, as scientists found by measuring the brain activity of 14 adults over 11 days on Antarctica\u2019s King George Island.<\/p>\n

To remain mostly alert, yet also sneak in sufficient winks, the penguins have evolved an enviable ability to function on extremely fractured sleep \u2014 at least during the breeding season.<\/p>\n

Researchers can now see when either hemisphere of the brain \u2014 or both at once \u2014 are asleep.<\/p>\n

Frigatebirds snooze half their brains in flight
Poets, sailors and birdwatchers have long wondered whether birds that fly for months at a time actually get any winks on the wing.<\/p>\n

In some cases, the answer is yes \u2014 as scientists discovered when they attached devices that measure brain-wave activity to the heads of large seabirds nesting in the Galapagos Islands called great frigatebirds.<\/p>\n

While flying, frigatebirds can sleep with one half of the brain at a time. The other half remains semialert so that one eye is still watching for obstacles in their flight path.<\/p>\n

This allows the birds to soar for weeks at a time, without touching land or water, which would damage their delicate, non-water repellent feathers.<\/p>\n

Frigatebirds can\u2019t do tricky maneuvers \u2014 flapping, foraging or diving \u2014 with just one half of their brain. When they dive for prey, they must be fully awake. But in flight, they have evolved to sleep when gliding and circling upward on massive drafts of warm rising air that keep them aloft with minimal effort.<\/p>\n

Back at the nest in trees or bushes, frigatebirds change up their nap routine \u2014 they are more likely to sleep with their whole brain at once and for much longer bouts. This suggests their in-flight sleeping is a specific adaptation for extended flying, Rattenborg said.<\/p>\n

A few other animals have similar sleeping hacks. Dolphins can sleep with one half of the brain at a time while swimming. Some other birds, including swifts and albatrosses, can sleep in flight, scientists say.<\/p>\n

Frigatebirds can fly 255 miles (410 kilometers) a day for more than 40 days, before touching land, other researchers found \u2014 a feat that wouldn\u2019t be possible without being able to sleep on the wing.<\/p>\n

Elephant seals slumber while diving deep
On land, life is easy for a 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) northern elephant seal. But at sea, sleep is dangerous \u2014 sharks and killer whales that prey on seals are lurking.<\/p>\n

These seals go on extended foraging trips, for up to eight months, repeatedly diving to depths of several hundred feet (meters) to catch fish, squid, rays and other sea snacks.<\/p>\n

Each deep dive may last around 30 minutes. And for around a third of that time, the seals may be asleep, as research led by Jessica Kendall-Bar of Scripps Institution of Oceanography revealed.<\/p>\n

Kendall-Bar\u2019s team devised a neoprene headcap similar to a swimming cap with equipment to detect motion and seal brain activity during dives, and retrieved the caps with logged data when seals returned to beaches in Northern California.<\/p>\n

The 13 female seals studied tended to sleep during the deepest portions of their dives, when they were below the depths that predators usually patrol.<\/p>\n

That sleep consisted of both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep. During REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, the seals were temporarily paralyzed \u2014 just like humans during this deep-sleep stage \u2014 and their dive motion changed. Instead of a controlled downward glide motion, they sometimes turned upside down and spun in what the researchers called a \u201csleep spiral\u201d during REM sleep.<\/p>\n

In the span of 24 hours, the seals at sea slept for around two hours total. (Back on the beach, they averaged around 10 hours.)<\/p>\n

The winding evolution of sleep
Scientists are still learning about all the reasons we sleep \u2014 and just how much we really need.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that any tired human can try these extreme animal sleep hacks. But learning more about how varied napping may be in the wild shows the flexibility of some species. Nature has evolved to make shut-eye possible in even the most precarious situations.<\/p>\n

Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates<\/p>\n

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