This Animal Sleeps 10,000 Times a Day, Only Sleeps for 4 Seconds at a Time

This animal sleeps 10,000 times a day, but each sleep only lasts for 4 seconds.

White-chinned penguins have become one of the natural extreme sleepers, experiencing over 10,000 micro sleeps that last up to four seconds each day, according to new research. These penguins, which live in breeding colonies, each containing tens of thousands of individuals, must remain vigilant against threats to their nests from predatory skuas and hostile neighboring colonies.

The result is, the sleep schedule of penguins is in a state between consciousness and sleep, reaching 11 hours of sleep every day. The researchers behind this study published their findings on December 30th in the journal Science.

This Animal Sleeps 10,000 Times a Day, Only Sleeps for 4 Seconds at a Time

"This clearly demonstrates at what point sleep is limited by the process of natural selection,"
Paul-Antoine Libourel, a researcher at Lyon Center for Research in Neuroscience in France.

Source: Live Science

"The animal faces a clear tradeoff between sleep and its benefits while being less alert, and being awake but with physiological costs of not sleeping. These penguins have found a way to reap the benefits of sleep while remaining alert to protect their eggs."

add Paul.

Learn Sleep Patterns of 14 Penguins

Researchers studied the sleep patterns of 14 penguins from a colony of 2,700 breeding pairs on King George Island, off the coast of Antarctica. After surgically implanting electrodes into the penguins' brains and connecting them to data recorders on their backs, the researchers released them back to the island.

"Research Results on Penguins"

After weeks of observing sleeping penguins, scientists have conclusive evidence of one of nature's strangest bluffing strategies: hatching penguins experience 600 microsleeps every hour, each lasting an average of four seconds.

By monitoring the brain activity of drowsy birds during their microsleep, researchers also discovered that sometimes they only sleep with half of their brain, while the other hemisphere remains alert.

"Want to Observe the Sleep of Other Animals."

The scientists say that the unusual sleeping habits in chinstrap penguins have raised many dominant assumptions about sleep across the animal kingdom. Their next step is to search for other animals with similar sleep patterns.

"Proving that sleeping in this way has no cost for penguins will challenge the current interpretation of fragmentation that inherently harms sleep quality."
"Vladyslav Vyazovskiy and Christian Harding, penguin sleep researchers from the University of Oxford."

Source: Live Science

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