Sleep is as necessary for human health as it is for animals. During sleep, dogs, for example, fix the experiences of the day, charge batteries and reactivate their bodies. They have, like us, REM phases and dreams. However, there are substantial differences between animal and human rest, both in terms of duration and posture!
Sleep time
If humans usually sleep (or rather we try) 7 or 8 hours a day, there are animals such as giraffes, elephants or horses that with 2-3 hours of sleep have enough . In certain cases, this is due to their natural condition as prey (horses, zebras …) in which if they spend more hours with their eyes closed they can be in serious danger of death.
On the opposite side, there are individuals in the animal kingdom capable of dozing up to 22 hours a day . And no, it’s not the sloths but the koalas . The sloths lag behind with a whopping 20 hours dreaming of little angels. Platypus are also great sleepers and their REM phase, the one in which they dream, can last up to 8 hours.
Impossible postures
And if the, in our human opinion, deficient or excessive hours of sleep of the animals have surprised you, wait until you know the positions so “strange” that some have of giving a nap. Flamingos sleep supported by a single leg whose joint they are able to block; horses usually spend the night standing up, although if the dream lasts longer, they lie on their side ; the sea otters close their eyes holding hands so as not to be separated from the group and the sleepy koala does it up to a eucalyptus, more specifically “embedded” between the bifurcations of the branches.
Other surprising curiosities about animal sleep are starred by dolphins, who deactivate one hemisphere and leave the other in charge of the rudder, breathing and certain vital functions, and hippos, who sleep underwater and rise to the surface to breathe … without wake up!
Don’t miss out on more amazing aspects of animal sleep in the photo gallery below.
