Which living creature never sleeps

Digging Deeper. Digging Deeper: Depression and the Past. Digging Deeper: Germs and Disease. Digging Deeper: Milk and Immunity. Does Playing Music Reduce Stress? Is a City Slicker Sicker? Isn't It Ionic? It's Raining Cats and Dogs Countdown to Disaster in Marine Food Webs? Think Fast! Tigers are Grrrrreat! Who Needs Sleep Anyway? Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road? Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Headaches? Written by: Lindsey O'Connell. Essential: required, or necessary.

Evolution: is any process of growth, change or development over time. Horses need very little deep sleep. This is the sleep we normally refer to as REM sleep. Whales will only sleep around 1,5 hours per day. When they sleep, the body temperature is lowered. So the sleep is spread out over the day and divided into small minutes breaks.

Another interesting fact about whales is that they are actually alert while sleeping. They will only use one part of the brain for sleeping and the other part of the brain is still working to some extent. But it is not really a state of sleep as we normally think about sleep. As we looked at above, this is a behavior we find among large sea creatures like dolphins and whales. The animals will out half of the brain to sleep while the other part is used for navigating, swimming, and in order to be alert to any potential predators.

The unihemispheric sleep patterns enable them to close one eye and keep the other one open. This is a pretty amazing way of sleeping that we also find outside the aquatic animals.

We also find this sleeping pattern among terrestrial and some bird species. They will do so when they migrate in order to stay in the air while resting. This enables them to make fewer stops and get to the destination much faster. Mainly because they are airborne and they would stop resting if biologists were to interfere during the long flights.

Sources: bbc. Skip to content Not all animals sleep. Table of Contents. Was this article helpful? Does sleep allow the brain to repair damage and process information? Is it necessary for energy regulation in the body? Scientists and thinkers as far back as the Greek philosopher Aristotle have offered explanations for why we sleep, and yet, the exact purpose of sleep remains an open question.

In her quest to figure out what exactly sleep is, she conducted the first sleep-deprivation experiment in animals. Using an approach that now seems quite cruel, the physician kept puppies continuously awake, finding that they died after a few days of sleep deprivation.

Over subsequent decades, further sleep-deprivation experiments using other animals, like rodents and cockroaches, found similarly fatal results. However, the underlying cause of death in these cases, and how it relates to sleep, is still unknown.

While total sleeplessness seems dangerous, some creatures can get by with remarkably short bouts of sleep. Similarly, you may have also heard that bullfrogs never sleep at all.

In , researchers in PLOS Biology point out that notion is mostly based on a study that used a specific definition for sleep. Their real takeaway, and broadly in the current field of animal sleep, is that the resting life of animals and humans still holds plenty of mystery.

We need more observation and studies to probe its depth. Register or Log In. The Magazine Shop. Login Register Stay Curious Subscribe. Planet Earth. Newsletter Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news.

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