Meet Animals That Never Sleep
Everybody, humans or animals need some hours of sleep to rejuvenate themselves. But today, we are going to talk about animals that do not sleep at all!!
Everybody, humans or animals need some hours of sleep to rejuvenate themselves. Human bodies require 7 hours of sleep on an average. Some humans need 8 hours, some 9 and some also sleep only for just 5 hours everyday! The sleep required by animals depends upon their species.
But today, we are going to talk about animals that do not sleep at all !!
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Dolphins - Dolphins must stay in the water in order to survive. So, how does this aquatic mammal sleep? Well, they have a couple of methods.
One way is called logging. Logging is simply when this animal positions itself horizontally and floats near the surface of the ocean. They bear a resemblance to a log when they do this. Some dolphins position themselves vertically to sleep. They rest with their tailfin pointing down toward the ocean floor and their snout up toward the water’s surface. They hang in the water near the surface while dozing.
Since dolphins are social animals they sleep in groups. Staying together provides them with protection if a predator approaches. They can alert each other and take off through the water. Pairs of dolphins in a group swim right next to each other. They slow their swimming speed in order to sleep side by side. This method is used for a short nap as opposed to a long sleep. The key is that only part of a dolphin’s brain becomes inactive while it’s sleeping. This animal is always alert to some degree even though its body is resting.
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Fruit Flies - While some flies sleep for 10 hours a day, others don’t sleep at all or survive on just 4 minutes of sleep per day. In an experiment, they also found that fruit flies deprived of sleep lived just as long as the flies who slept “normally.”
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Alpine Swifts - Alpine swifts are birds that have incredible migration habits where they travel from Switzerland to West Africa. During this flight, they can fly continuously for 200 days straight – that’s 6 months.
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Bullfrogs - Bullfrogs always stay alert and react to stimuli as if they are awake even when they appear to be resting. For all the other months, they seem to “rest” but never reach the inactivity or deep slumber of sleep.
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Jellyfish - Suppose the definition of sleep requires your brain to be in a state of inactivity. In that case, animals like the upside-down jellyfish that have no brains technically can’t sleep.
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Walrus - You might associate the feelings of being lazy and sleepy with walruses, but these large animals can easily stay awake for 84 hours at a time. They’ll mostly spend these hours swimming and looking for food.
Sleep is pretty much universal. Practically every animal sleeps in one way or another. Sleep seems to be common sense for keeping bodies healthy. If it weren’t, why would we feel tired? However, sleep is not as simple as that. Many scientists believe that sleep serves a really important purpose but they haven’t found what that purpose is yet. Scientists are looking at a variety of explanations.
