Migrating Birds Take Hundreds of Powernaps. 141
Ant writes "MSNBC reports that to help make up for sleep lost during marathon night flights, migratory birds take hundreds of powernaps during the day, each lasting only a few seconds, a new study suggests.
Every autumn, Swainson's thrushes fly up to 3,000 miles from their breeding grounds in northern Canada and Alaska to winter in Central and South America. Come spring, the birds make the long trek back. The birds fly mostly at night and often for long hours at a time, leaving little time for sleep."
Humans Too (Score:5, Informative)
As usual, there is a WikiPedia entry (not very useful) and this site too: http://www.sleepdex.org/microsleep.htm [sleepdex.org]
Hmmm... people do it. Birds do it. I'll be shocked when the research is published that fish do it too.
Re:How do they avoid crashing? (Score:5, Informative)
Even more impressive is the behavior of the Wandering Albatross which can fly for days at a time within a wingspan of ocean waves (albeit their wingspan is about 10 feet). They can do this even during a full gale.
So how do they avoid crashing?
They soar. Wings generate lift just because they're there and under the right conditions a bird might well increase its altitude while napping.
As a wave moves through the air, or air moves over a hill, it compresses and rises. Thus a sleeping bird may find itself safely carried over variations in surface hight without having to do a thing. It's called "slope soaring."
KFG
Urban legend alert (Score:5, Informative)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross#Morphology
You couldn't be more wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
More importantly, though, although you must accept the inevitability of sleep, nonetheless you assume that sleep is a behavior and that behavior can be affected by a cage. Well, the view that sleep is behavior has no scientific basis, in spite of the fact that we (as do other animals) have some control over when we sleep, which is, well, totally beside the point. The fact remains that we, and all animals, MUST sleep and we cannot change that. If we don't sleep, our immune and nervous systems shut down and we die. This is true of all animals.
The latest science indicates beyond any doubt that sleep has nothing to do with behavior but is, rather, a metabolic state (anabolism) which is, of course, cell-based and which, therefore, cannot be affected by putting a bird in a cage or by attaching a neuro-transmitter to a flying bird.
Studies of this kind, therefore, do NOT lose credibility because it is not behavior which is being tested, but rather it is what is being tested is a simple measurement of how the catabolic - anabolic (awake - asleep) balance is maintained in birds, in particular.
It's too bad everybody seems to think that either this is just a humorous article or that they aren't interested enough in understanding what sleep is to spend a few minutes either thinking about what sleep really is, or reading about it. Sleep is important enough that if you try to do without it you will soon be rendered useless and die. Understanding sleep can make your life better. Not getting good sleep makes your life hell, if it doesn't kill you. You can't alter the basic metabolism of life by deciding that you are somehow special and you can't understand sleep if you simply dismiss it as behavior.
Re:Why they sleep only a few seconds (Score:3, Informative)
Did Anyone RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
The article is not even about sleeping while flying, they are talking entirely of the bird's sleep states during the daytime (and then the birds would fly at night). But, what do I expect? This is
Re:this early in the morning (Score:4, Informative)