Is There An Animal That Does Not Sleep

Written past: Lindsey O'Connell

What's in the Story?

Cat naps definitely count every bit slumber.

Have yous ever wondered how fish and dolphins sleep? Or why your best friend likes to sleep for 12 hours when you would rather slumber for eight hours? If yous have, so you are in good visitor considering many scientists accept wondered the same thing. In the PLOS Biology article, "Is Sleep Essential?," scientists discuss whether slumber is necessary for all species, and if and so, why sleep is so important.

How Do We Ascertain Sleep?

Slumber is pretty much universal. Practically every fauna sleeps in one style or another. Sleep seems to exist common sense for keeping bodies healthy. If information technology weren't, why would nosotros feel tired?

However, sleep is non as uncomplicated every bit that. Many scientists believe that sleep serves a actually important purpose but they haven't found what that purpose is yet. Scientists are looking at a variety of explanations. Maybe sleep is just a nice pastime – like playing baseball game or watching television – that is useful for keeping united states out of trouble only non necessarily for good health.

With multiple ideas about why animals sleep, first scientists had to decide what counts as sleep. The scientists defined sleep as being still and having little to no reaction to attempts to awaken. The scientists looked at three different ways that animals slumber to see if it is true that some animals really don't need sleep. They examined:

1. Animals that don't need sleep (bullfrogs and dolphins)
2. Animals that don't need rebound sleep after using up all their energy (bees)
3. Animals that testify harmful side effects from slumber deprivation (humans)

Bullfrogs…

No rest for the Bullfrog.

The bullfrog was called as an animal that doesn't slumber considering when tested for responsiveness by being shocked, it had the same reaction whether awake or resting.  However, there were some problems with how the bullfrogs were tested.  These problems convinced the scientists at that place wasn't enough evidence that bullfrogs didn't sleep.

And Dolphins…

Only one-half of a dolphin's brain sleeps at a time.

The dolphin was also considered a special case because dolphins accept the power to put but one-half their brains to slumber at a time.  The half-comatose brain made it difficult to mensurate response time and made scientists first to question their initial definition of sleep.  Retrieve, part of being asleep means being still, and since dolphins still swam around it seemed that they did non fit into that category.  Notwithstanding, when scientists measured dolphins' brain waves they saw that the patterns were similar to brains that were asleep, at least in half of the encephalon.

And Bees…

Are bees masters of cheating sleep?

Side by side, scientists looked for animals that didn't need to grab upwards on sleep after being awake for a long time. They found a few animals like bees that seemed to not demand extra sleep. Yet, the scientists decided the experiments washed were flawed because simply the length of sleep was tested, not the quality of sleep. This was problematic because many animals regulate sleep by sleeping deeper, not longer, so they ruled out the research as proof of animals that don't need to make upwards sleep.

Here is a table from the original commodity that lists all the animals the scientists thought were examples of not sleeping or not using rebound slumber. The first column looks at animals that run into the definition of sleep, the second cavalcade looks at whether the animals make up their sleep and the 3rd cavalcade talks about why the animals were considered special cases.

Oh My!

Finally, scientists looked at whether not sleeping has serious consequences.  In studies where people went without sleep, they found that people became half-awake, kind of similar zombies walking around mindlessly. The scientists also constitute that sleep-deprived people got and so tired they fell asleep no thing what they were doing.  Sometimes, people fell asleep while driving and that is really dangerous!  Obviously, the scientists decided that non sleeping is bad for your health.

So We Need Slumber, But Why?

Don't wake a sleeping tiger!

In the end, the scientists concluded that slumber must have some kind of necessary office; otherwise, it would not be universal and it would not be damaging to our wellness to go without sleep. The next step is to effigy out what exactly slumber does.

The scientists recollect that nonetheless sleep affects the trunk, the major part of sleep is the aforementioned in every animal. This ways they believe that sleep evolved early because it helps all animals alive ameliorate lives. The scientists also think that the office of sleep has something to do with the brain because that is the office of the body that is affected most by the lack of slumber.

Other scientific studies virtually retention help support the idea that slumber is important for the brain past showing that sleep helps us retain more than information. But think, if scientists can find how sleep works, maybe ane day nosotros can use that information to make studying like shooting fish in a barrel!

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Sleeping Babe from Wikimedia - by D. Sharon Pruitt

Source: https://askabiologist.asu.edu/plosable/who-needs-sleep-anyway#:~:text=Bullfrogs%E2%80%A6,reaction%20whether%20awake%20or%20resting.

Posted by: wardhoulds.blogspot.com

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