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Dont sleep these during awards11/29/2023 ![]() ![]() While their conspecifics in the wild travel to their wintering grounds, white-crowned sparrows in captivity jump around their cages restlessly and beat their wings. Those with the least sleep are the most successfulĪs opposed to this, other bird species, like the North American white-crowned sparrow, need far less sleep at certain times than they normally do. ![]() In addition to birds, it is known that dolphins, seals and manatees also engage in this behavior, which is called unihemispheric sleep: just one half of the brain sleeps while the other remains awake. The birds can thereby rest a part of their brain while keeping an eye out for potential predators. Rattenborg had already observed a fascinating phenomenon while doing his doctoral work on mallard ducks: in a group of sleeping ducks, those sitting at the edge kept their outwardly directed eye open and the corresponding brain hemisphere remained awake. In the following night, that brain region, which had been responsible for the seeing eye, slept more deeply than the region with connection to the previously covered eye.īut why is there such variation in the amounts of sleep needed by organisms across the animal kingdom? How is it that hedgehogs and bats sleep for up to 20 hours per day while giraffes can manage with just two hours? And what happens with migratory birds that have no opportunity to make intermediate stops when flying over the open sea? Do they sleep in the air? Do they refrain from sleeping temporarily? Or is it possible that their brains sleep in installments? During the screening, they covered one eye of the birds with a flap. Niels Rattenborg and his colleagues had observed this in pigeons, to which they had shown David Attenborough's film 'The Life of Birds' while keeping them awake. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that brain regions that were active during the day appear to sleep especially deeply at night. To prevent this from happening, numerous connections are deleted while we sleep. “At some point, our heads would be so full that we wouldn’t be able to absorb anything new,” says Niels Rattenborg. ![]() To do this, new synapses are formed in the brain and existing connections are further developed. One attempt at providing an explanation is known in expert circles as the “synaptic homeostasis hypothesis.” According to this theory, the purpose of sleep is to clear the head: while we are awake, we are bombarded with huge amounts of information that need to be processed. And nobody has managed to explain why this is the case. Whether roundworms, fruit flies, fish or elephants – no animal can get by for very long without sleep. The question as to why organisms must sleep is one that has preoccupied scientists for generations. Whether roundworms or fruit flies - no animal can get by without sleep He and his colleague Bryson Voirin have now provided proof that birds can actually sleep while flying. He has been carrying out research in Seewiesen since 2005. Rattenborg studied biology, did his doctorate on the sleep behavior of mallard ducks, and then took up a position as a scientist in Wisconsin. ![]() Later on, I worked there for ten years as a technician.”Īs luck would have it, ornithology and sleep were easy to combine. The fact that he ended up working on avian sleep is thanks to a vacation job: “After college, I worked in a sleep laboratory during the summer and over Christmas. “Even as a child, I was fascinated by birds,” he explains. An American with Danish roots, he has been working in this field for a good two decades. Niels Rattenborg is Leader of the Avian Sleep Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, south of Munich. But how can these birds do this apparently with no sleep? Which means that it takes no breaks to allow its muscles to recover or simply rest.Īs remarkable as this might be, godwits do not seem to be the record holders: Great frigatebirds can fly for over two months without ever landing, and alpine swifts might fly non-stop for 200 days. It completes this entire journey in just eight days without any stopovers. It can cover a distance of over 11,000 kilometers from its breeding ground in Alaska to New Zealand. It may not be as big as an ostrich, as fast as a peregrine, or as loud as the South American oilbird, but it surpasses them all when it comes to non-stop flying. The bar-tailed godwit is one of the avian world’s record-holders. ![]()
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