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Evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight
- ch4s3 10y agoI looks like they're referencing this paper[1] which suggests that like dolphins, birds can sleep 1 brain hemisphere at a time. That's pretty interesting. [1]http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6718/full/397397a0.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6718/full/397397a...
- yareally 10y agoDucks do that while sleeping. If you observe ducks sleeping near a pond you'll typically see them sleeping with one eye open and one shut. That way they can still stay alert enough to watch for predators.
- dmcginty 10y agoI've had several pet birds and I've observed the same thing from them. I just assumed they were just pretending to sleep.
- yareally 10y agoYour comment made me wonder how common it is with birds and it seems to be trait shared with all of them[1]. Pretty interesting. I asked my friend if her bird does that and it only seems to when it's not in a deep sleep yet, but eventually it will close both eyes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep
- throwaway98764 10y agoGives a new meaning to the term, "sleep with one eye open at night." :)
- glandium 10y agoLet me venture a guess: that expression comes exactly from observing animals keeping one eye open.
- eternalban 10y agoHaven't bothered to search for this, but do you know offhand if they also have a L-R hemisphere/body crossover?
- corecoder 10y agoAll vertebrates have that, IIRC.
- idlewords 10y agoWe really need to figure out what sleep is for. It seems important.
- visarga 10y agoIt functions as a regularizer in learning and reduces unnecessary energy use.
- stucat 10y agoWhile those are benefits of sleep, I don't believe we consider them to be the reason we sleep.
- empath75 10y agohttps://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flush-out-toxins-during-sleep https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/brain-may-flus...
- kerbalspacepro 10y agoThis seems the most likely to me, purely based off the fact that going on without sleep gives the same feeling in the head as walking a long time gives me in the foot and legs.
- 24gttghh 10y agoSo, the brain is an electro-chemical engine, and like other engines, it must be shut down to perform regular maintenance so the engine lasts longer, and is less prone to error conditions.
- jacobolus 10y agoNot just the brain, but the whole body. If I go without enough sleep, my hair and skin start getting greasy, my immune system is weakened, my muscles start feeling tired, etc.
- supahfly_remix 10y ago> On land, birds can switch from sleeping with both hemispheres simultaneously to sleeping with one hemisphere at a time in response to changing ecological demands17,18. During such unihemispheric slow wave sleep (USWS) birds keep the eye connected to the awake hemisphere open and directed toward potential threats. This reminds me of the low-power sleep states of PCI (L0s, L1, etc.) or a multicore CPU
- petra 10y agoIs it possible for a human(for example a meditator) to learn to sleep with one eye open ?
- Mz 10y agoYes. My son used to sleep with one eye open. After serving in Vietnam, my father habitually napped with both eyes open.
- mi100hael 10y agoA human can sleep with one or both eyes open, but as far as I know it's not at all related to brain activity. The person's brain is still fully asleep. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagophthalmos#Nocturnal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagophthalmos#Nocturnal
- sp332 10y agoYour brain can still react to things when it's asleep though. You can be shaken awake, or shouted awake, or woken up by a bright light. It doesn't seem impossible that seeing something dangerous while asleep could wake you up.
- Mz 10y agoPresumably this is exactly why my father learned to sleep with his eyes open while caught behind enemy lines in Vietnam for, as I understand it, a month or more.
- david-given 10y agoI remember once waking up, when, for some reason, I had my eyes open. It was weird: all I saw was just shape; not shapes of anything in particular, but just pure essence of what shape really was. Then, over a period of a few seconds, and in distinct chunks, it suddenly resolved into things I could actually identify, and I realise what I was looking at. After the fact I put this down as the pattern-matching areas of my brain starting working rather more slowly than the rest of my visual cortex, so it took a while before they starting resolving what my eyes were seeing into meaningful concepts. I have a variety of mild sleep disorders. I can recommend them as a hobby; they're fascinating. Admittedly, it helps that being hag-ridden is so familiar it's practically an old friend; the first few times were utterly terrifying[ * ]. But the weirdest of the lot is something I've dubbed false memory syndrome, where I'll remember something, while quite conscious, which never happened, and frequently in quite some detail. Just last night I had apparently written and drawn a comic book. That was better than the time I was on the run after having killed someone... [ * ] Apparently there's a theory that this is where alien abduction myths come from.
- computator 10y agoI'm reminded that we still don't know conclusively what purpose sleep serves[1]. We know about things unimaginably distant in scale or time -- like quarks and the Big Bang -- but we don't know the answer to something seemingly pedestrian. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Functions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Functions
- sdegutis 10y agoIt's meant to separate days. That way each day is a new day, and you have some sort of mental partition between each one.
- empath75 10y agomeant by who?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sdegutis 10y agoWhoever you want.
- white-flame 10y agoWhat purpose does that serve? Why would it be more advantageous than a continuous time stream? We don't have similar separation between morning & evening, for example. (though I've always been a fan of the siesta)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wturner 10y agoIts meant to serve physiological homeostasis in some way yet to be completely understood :)
- serf 10y ago
- rukuu001 10y agoI'm currently reading Where Song Began[1] which discusses this, and is super-interesting besides. Has an anecdote of WW1 pilots encountering flocks of dozing swallows at night. 1. https://www.amazon.com.au/Where-Song-Began-Australias-Changed-ebook/dp/B00KYDSKXW https://www.amazon.com.au/Where-Song-Began-Australias-Change...
- totalZero 10y agoPersonally, I always have trouble sleeping while flying.
- idlewords 10y agoI wonder if they have that "I'm falling" dream and then wake up.
- gnashville 10y agoI think that's actually unique to primates (who do/did sleep in trees).
- gweinberg 10y agoKind of OT, but does anyone happen to know if a person with a severed corpus callosum can sleep with one hemisphere at a time?
- ara24 10y agowow, birds can auto-pilot. if two halves of the brain can work independently, wouldn't there be a sync problem! I wonder how the brain handles it.
- prmph 10y agoSometimes I can hear myself lightly snoring while asleep. Its kind of weird
- k_sze 10y agoJust me or the fact that they managed to record the brain activity of birds in flight seems more interesting than the fact that birds sleep in flight? I mean, the reason I clicked the link is because I wanted to learn HOW they recorded the brain activity. I just never imagined EEG sensor + logger can be miniaturized to such a degree.
- mattbgates 10y agoIt would make sense that birds do fall asleep while flying, as they are sometimes prone to fly into buildings or windows that were obviously visible.