[HN Gopher] Study on quality of sleep when pet cats choose locat...
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Study on quality of sleep when pet cats choose location of slumber
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 233 points
Date : 2022-03-19 23:24 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spoon-tamago.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spoon-tamago.com)
| whateveracct wrote:
| Cats spend most of their lives asleep. To sleep with cats is to
| be amongst experts beyond human ability. It's the best.
| beardyw wrote:
| By coincidence the cat was also doing a study trying to predict
| where the human would sleep that night, and going there first.
| Got it right 100% of the time.
| sitta wrote:
| I do the opposite for my cat. He's a very affectionate boy. He
| likes to sleep with us, but we'd prefer he didn't because we have
| a small bed and it makes our sleep worse. So, my solution was to
| snuggle with him on our guest bed a half hour or so before we go
| to bed. Then, when I get up, he stays on the guest bed and sleeps
| the rest of the night.
|
| You might think that he might just do this out of habit now, but
| if we go out in the evening and come back late enough that he
| doesn't get his snuggle time, he almost always shows up on our
| bed after we've gone to sleep.
| stevage wrote:
| He probably just wants a warm bed to sleep in.
| kbutler wrote:
| Doesn't fit the data - if he's already been sleeping, his bed
| will be warm, and he wouldn't have the incentive to get up
| and change beds.
| sitta wrote:
| I think there is some truth in what stevage said. Usually
| when we come home the cats get up and are unsettled due to
| the change in routine. I try to get them settled on the
| guest bed again before going to bed myself, but this
| doesn't always work if they're really amped up. If I am
| able to get them settled, he won't sleep with us (the other
| cat isn't as interested in sleeping with us), but, if I
| can't, he'll likely show up in our bed later.
|
| So, it is likely just a matter of getting him comfortable
| sleeping somewhere warm so that he isn't interested in
| moving to our bed.
|
| Edit: Having said that, before I started this routine, he
| _would_ come up to bed if he was sleeping somewhere else
| already on a normal night in. So, I don't know.
| omegalulw wrote:
| One thing that always freaks me out is how do you trust your
| cat to not scratch your face or maul your eyes out while you
| sleep (accidently or otherwise)?
| boppo1 wrote:
| Cats can be very affectionate. I have three cats and they all
| jockey to get in my lap whenever I'm sitting or lay on my
| stomach if I'm reclining reading a book.
|
| People who know cats as unkind typically have only met cats
| unknown to them.
| toast0 wrote:
| With the three cats I've had living with me, the closest I've
| come to getting my face attacked while sleeping was sometimes
| they walk over me, which is fine when they walk over my legs
| or torso, and uncomfortable when they walk over my groin or
| face. Usually there's some amount of motion or noise so I can
| get my arms up to protect my face or at least move the cat.
|
| I haven't had the types of cats that just attack their owners
| with no provocation though. All three did have the thing
| where sometimes they get upset by something that is
| impercetible to humans and swat at apparently nothing and
| then run away. That's not usually too stealthy though, and
| you can usually avoid getting attacked in the face.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Because he/she is morphologically different from a mice. Good
| question though.
| hackernewds wrote:
| While it's quirky and interesting, I'm surprised this
| qualitative-only impact qualified for a dissertation
| Melatonic wrote:
| It is rumoured that if you give a person enough alcohol they too
| will be able to access their inner cat-based mechanism for
| choosing slumber locations!
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| "For example, the researcher's journal often described feelings
| of excitement and adventure in not knowing where she would be
| sleeping that night."
|
| I will attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail this year. So I'll
| be sleeping at a different place almost every night for almost 5
| months. Will I sleep better?
|
| Edit: I cannot find her dissertation.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Depends. The continuous northbound party crowd sometimes stays
| up later than other folks might like. If you're in a shelter
| with somebody who snores loudly it can be iffy (earplugs weigh
| nothing. My favorites are the Howard Leight MAX with a cord. If
| you're a back sleeper, you can probably be less picky and go
| with a more rigid option). Occasionally the ground is so
| wretched that it'll screw up your sleeping (hammockers have
| different problems, but I tented, so I can't speak to that
| personally). Some people report shelter mice keeping them up.
| I've not had that experience. The foul weather rule for
| shelters is "there's always room for one more". That sometimes
| means everybody is crammed in and if one person moves, it turns
| into a Newton's cradle situation.
|
| Also, I don't know how old you are, but I've found the shelter
| floors have gotten a lot harder as I've gotten older. What I
| slept well enough, but not quite comfortably on on a Z-rest at
| 20 is now something I need a NeoAir (or equivalent) to get a
| good night of sleep and not wake up with lumps on my hips from
| the hard floor. The ground is _much_ softer unless it 's hard-
| packed mineral soil.
|
| Apart from those things and the occasional storm, etc, you can
| pretty much count on sleeping like you're dead.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Yes but because you'll be incredibly tired :)
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220309204156/https://www.spoon...
| jrjarrett wrote:
| From reading the title I expected it to be a study along the
| lines of "if your cat decides to sleep on your face, then your
| sleep will be of lesser quality than if it decides to sleep at
| the foot of the bed."
| nullc wrote:
| From the title I expected it to be a study on the quality of
| the cat's sleep based on it choosing the location vs being
| assigned a sleeping location.
| remram wrote:
| Does her cat not consistently sleep in her bed? Both now and with
| the multiple generations of cats I grew up with, they would come
| sleep between my legs almost every night. For some of them, they
| would already be there when I get to bed, and come get me if I'm
| up too late. Maybe they were running the experiment on me...
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Yeah, same here.
| cdubzzz wrote:
| My previous cats all did that and I loved it. Weirdly, our
| newest cat prefers to sleep on my chest right up by my face.
| She has trained me to like it and before she started doing it I
| normally could not even sleep on my back. The only annoyance is
| that she occasionally will wake me up by lightly clawing my
| lip. Then just stare at me like, "why'd you wake up?"
| bluedays wrote:
| White people are so weird with their animals.
| trashcan wrote:
| Were your cats raised in a househould with a dog? I have only
| had one cat (bengal) that sleeps in my bed and it was. I've
| read it really helps cats be more outgoing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG0S5NzWrLo
|
| Also, it being cold in the house seems to have a big impact
| too.
| trashcan wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vKWk6tc2zY might be a better
| video
| mabbo wrote:
| My cat likes to fall asleep at the foot of my bed every
| night... until we fall asleep. Then he gets up and move
| somewhere he likes better, usually his cat tower.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| Our cat decides whose bed he sleeps in, usually next to my
| legs. He moves without fuss when I move. Mornings he likes to
| be on top of me.
|
| As a kitten he would be under the covers next to me.
| beebeepka wrote:
| For a while I used to have 4 kittens sleep on the bed with
| me. Man, was I super careful. I didn't have to be as cautious
| when it was just their mother next to me
| fullstop wrote:
| We have four cats and one of them very much wants to be in
| the bed with me on a nightly basis. The other ones also do,
| to some extent, but the one that I let in will destroy things
| in an attempt to enter if the door is closed.
|
| Once in, she's polite and sleeps at the end of the bed or on
| my legs if she's feeling a bit more affectionate that night.
| I don't mind having her in the bed.
|
| Two of the remaining three are No Fun to have around when I'm
| trying to sleep. One will wake up very early and start
| knocking things off of my night stand in an attempt to get me
| to feed her. The other one will go into POWER GROOMING mode
| as soon as he gets into the bed. It's loud, his breath isn't
| the best, and he won't stop. He grooms himself, thoroughly,
| for what seems like an eternity. To save myself the headache,
| I just kick these two out and they will find somewhere else
| to sleep.
|
| The last one doesn't come upstairs often, but he's not
| annoying to have around when he does.
|
| It's easy to say that "a cat is a cat" but they really do
| have their own habits and personalities.
| rvbissell wrote:
| One of my cats does the same. How does this affect your sleep?
| I have to turn left/back/right every so often in my sleep, and
| it disturbs the cat, and then me.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Looks like Ig Nobel Awards material, not because its intrinsic
| value or being interesting, but somewhat seem to follow the
| pattern.
| DicIfTEx wrote:
| Indeed it is - https://improbable.com/2022/03/19/sleeping-next-
| to-the-cat-w...
| mxwsn wrote:
| Very amusing. Though, she concludes there's no difference based
| on average sleep quality, but the variance is sizably larger, and
| I personally care quite a bit about sleep quality consistency.
| fencepost wrote:
| If I'm sleeping accessible to the cats, it means I fell asleep in
| an armchair (horrible bastard cat papa doesn't let Mr Sneezy the
| Hair Chewer in the bedroom) and the preferred feline sleep
| location is curled up on a blanket on my lap.
|
| That or curled up on top of the Comcast box (DVR?) which might
| possibly have a larger cardboard box on top of it to provide a
| comfy warm spot....
| pstoll wrote:
| tldr: "scientific" study with N=1 (author / researcher) draws
| useless conclusions, but because it contains "cats pics" gains
| some attention.
| trhway wrote:
| She has 5 cats. I doubt that her sleep and well being can be
| better than already is.
| dm319 wrote:
| That's a sweet article, but probably those findings relate to the
| age of the person doing the studying. A good bed should support
| your spine so that it is aligned while sleeping, and the comfort
| layer needs to allow for circulation to occur in the tissue you
| are lying on. If these factors are not correct you'll wake up
| with back pain, or poorly rested (due to excessive movement
| overnight to relieve poor circulation). I'm surprised they didn't
| find a worsening of sleep quality not sleeping on their bed.
|
| We have a cat and she definitely shifts her sleeping place every
| few days/week. Another theory I have is that it is a natural way
| of managing fleas, which will die off with no animal sleeping in
| the spot for several days.
| kwelstr wrote:
| This! I know for a fact that my cat changes sleeping places if
| he detects fleas and will not move back to the old spot for a
| couple of weeks. Flea management from a cat perspective.
| raunometsa wrote:
| While it's probably impractical to choose your spot for the night
| based on your cat's, I think there's actually something we can
| learn from here:
|
| "Cats will sleep in a variety of different locations, each likely
| the combination of factors such as _mood_ , warmth, light and
| coziness." [emphasis mine]
|
| And I think we - humans - should also follow our mood more often
| in our everyday lives - even things like sprint planning or
| building our startups. I feel there's something hidden in the
| feeling of how you feel (your mood).
|
| For example, you look at these 5 tasks in your backlog and choose
| what you want to work on based on your mood/excitement/feeling.
|
| Maybe the level of excitement you feel for the task is a message
| from your "unconscious" mind saying that this task is a good one
| to do right now? And even if that's not the case, you'll just
| feel better doing a task that you feel excitement for rather than
| the one you don't feel like doing right now.
|
| Advatages? 1) you just feel better (which I don't have to explain
| why that is good for you) and 2) you probably finish the task
| quicker and with a better quality
| bdefore wrote:
| Ideally management is not dogmatic about 'take from the top'
| for several reasons, but I like your suggestion to account for
| mood as well. There are definitely tasks that are mood-swingers
| one way or the other. Choose work based on where you want your
| mood to go (or can responsibly mood-sustain, if the mood-delta
| is negative).
|
| Upon reflection, I believe I've been implicitly doing this on
| tasks for side projects. Whether its feasible on teams may
| vary.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I think valued employees are generally allowed to do this. I
| am not even good but most places have explicitly
| allowed/encouraged such a thing.
| raunometsa wrote:
| >> Upon reflection, I believe I've been implicitly doing this
| on tasks for side projects.
|
| Yes, me too. I wrote about it here:
| https://remotehunt.com/blog/startup-art
|
| "The way I work on my side-project is very different from the
| way I work as a developer at a startup. But what's the
| difference?"
|
| TL;DR
|
| a) startup: I work on what I have to
|
| b) side project: "I work on what excites me the most at this
| moment."
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Based on the fact that the only constant in tech is
| accumulation of debt, across personal projects/FOSS/paid
| development, I feel confident in saying that nobody will ever
| feel like working on some tasks. Those tasks are important and
| need to be done.
| metadaemon wrote:
| I think a lot of the technical debt I've acquired in the past
| is due to having to rapidly apply business logic to existing
| systems for customers. This is typically not the type of work
| that I feel excited about.
|
| I do, to some extent, feel excitement about reducing
| technical debt. I'd assume that other engineers appreciate
| taking the time to "clean" outside of writing net new
| features. I could be totally off base, but I do think it
| would be interesting to see an environment that was purely
| mood driven development.
| leetrout wrote:
| Have you ever heard the phrase "man your battle stations"?
|
| There is another type of station: cleaning stations.
|
| And they make a call "all hands man your cleaning
| stations".
|
| Every sailor has an area they are responsible for cleaning
| and they go there and clean.
|
| I've pitched the same for codebases the past few places I
| have worked: everyone has a cleaning station in the code
| base and once every few weeks they go to that part of the
| code and fix or identify and document needed improvements.
|
| Making it a routine action that keeps up with incremental
| changes and ideally lowers effort on keeping a code base
| clean.
| kortex wrote:
| This is a great suggestion. My manager hates the term
| "tech debt", because it's too vague and everyone has
| their own idea of what constitutes tech debt. But what we
| can enumerate are things like heavily intertwined logic
| and IO, difficult to follow business logic, poor
| documentation, long functions, etc.
| ganzuul wrote:
| I think you have a solid incentive structure there so PMDD
| (Purely Mood Driven Development) is only a matter of
| implementation.
|
| Sort of like the job isn't done until you are putting away
| your tools.
| raunometsa wrote:
| I love your term "mood driven development" (or MDD for
| short?). I know Gumroad is doing this to at least some
| extent:
|
| "At the end of the day there's a lot of emotion that goes
| into Gumroad, that's not dissimilar from an art project. We
| sometimes pick what's fun and feels good to work on! We
| love listening to creators! We don't do tons of data
| analysis to decide what's worth working on." - @shl,
| founder
|
| I wrote about it more on my post "Startups should be more
| like art projects" (link somewhere in the comments already,
| won't add it here again not to spam)
| layer8 wrote:
| > mood driven development (or MDD for short)
|
| Somehow I don't think this will be a successful marketing
| term for that methodology.
|
| Or maybe we'll end up getting Mood Master certifications,
| daily mood-ups, mood retrospectives, and mood boards
| where we move tasks around. ;)
| 2ndbigbang wrote:
| This is similar to some of the ideas in David Kadavy's "Mind
| Management, Not Time Management".
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Management-Not-Time-Productivity...
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Cats will sleep in a variety of different locations, each
| likely the combination of factors such as _ mood _, warmth,
| light and coziness. " [emphasis mine]_
|
| They miss out a key component for some cats: territory
| monitoring. My boss seemingly often picks places where she can
| see a lot by just looking up & around, and can hear what is
| going on around the flat, when taking a light nap. For a deeper
| sleep coziness seems to be a higher priority.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| This seems to matter to both of mine, but in different ways -
| they're siblings. The male always sleeps in the same spot,
| from which he can see his food, the living room, and the
| door. The female sleeps next to me in bed. Like clockwork - I
| go to bed, she follows, and settles down neatly between the
| wall and me, and doesn't move until I get up with dawn. I'm
| the territory, in the latter case, I think. It isn't warmth -
| I sleep with the window open, and when I'm not in bed she
| sleeps in front of the fire, which is warm all night.
| dist1ll wrote:
| What you're describing is also known as staying in your comfort
| zone, which can be devastating.
|
| You should be mindful of your feelings and examine their
| origins, yes. But I wouldn't recommend being driven by them.
| xwdv wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with a comfort zone, life is too short
| really to spend long periods of time in brutal discomfort.
| Some people ruin their lives this way to the point where it
| will be impossible to ever be comfortable again before they
| die.
| dist1ll wrote:
| That's really bad advice for people who are naturally very
| fragile, have social anxiety or can't deal with
| confrontation. Unless they start dealing with the feeling
| of discomfort, they will either suffer their entire life or
| just reinforce bad habits like avoidance, procrastination,
| delusion and drug addictions. Lots of people ruin their
| lives like that.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| I feel that you are possibly jumping to conclusions as to
| what constitutes a "good life" versus a "ruined life". If
| people who have "small" comfort zones need support to
| move outside of them.
|
| Throwing categories such as avoidance, procrastination,
| delusion, and drug addiction into the same group leads me
| to believe that you might not understand what these
| supports look like.
| xwdv wrote:
| Those people are not in a comfort zone, their entire life
| is discomfort, they just don't know anything else. They
| need to move into the comfort zone or their lives will
| always be ruined.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| That was how I used to believe. What I didn't understand at
| the time is that there is a difference between "being
| comfortable" and "being complacent" - and that in order to
| achieve things or grow yourself, you don't necessarily have
| to be in a position of discomfort. The self-mortification
| theory ("push it to the limit, leave your comfort zone") in
| its extreme, as propagated by growth evangelists (and as it
| originally came from the field of high-performance sports) is
| anti-life and wrong.
|
| People are not bonsai trees - and bonsai trees are unnatural
| freaks of nature. We don't have to contort ourselves to live
| up to an externally imposed ideal. We can - firmly grounded -
| become greater than these ideals, simply by growing steadily
| - at our own speed, and with our own, "natural", methods -
| even within the speeds at which we feel comfortable.
|
| So: DO listen to your gut feelings. Examine them. And listen
| to them.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| Often ignored: People who "push themselves" have a huge
| number of supports from training, equipment, planning, etc.
|
| No one does an Tough Mudder without a huge amount of
| support. No one does a TED talk without a huge amount of
| support.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Maybe the level of excitement you feel for the task is a
| message from your "unconscious" mind saying that this task is a
| good one to do right now?
|
| I very strongly believe there is a bigger unconscious component
| to productivity than there is a conscious one.
|
| Some mornings I wake up and I _want_ to jump into the super
| nasty bucket of customer support tickets. "What the hell is
| still broken!? I am gonna fix that shit".
|
| On others, I will find customer support items antagonistic in
| every way, but would really like to spend time on a bunch of
| deep tech debt that has been piling up.
|
| And then there's the mornings where I wake up and I'd rather
| just play overwatch or <insert latest AAA title> all day. And
| you know what? At this point, I just fucking let it happen. I
| have found, over the course of about a decade, that if I let my
| monkey brain indulge periodically, the disciplined mind has a
| much better chance taking control the next time around. Some
| days I find myself very productively flip-flopping between
| gaming and work. I've watched some of my peers take this too
| far in the wrong way, but for whatever reason I can keep it on
| rails.
| ganzuul wrote:
| It would be _weird_ if there was no intelligence to e.g. how
| the chemical hijack of love relates to evolution. With how
| strong it is, and how unforgiving natural selection is, there
| must be a long-range correlation outside immediate perception
| similar to how flocks of animals know when it is time to
| migrate.
|
| We definitely keep a lot of what we actually know about the
| environment out from our daily driver philosophy.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| We need to think carefully before invoking natural selection
| too strongly. The fact that it has much less emphasis on
| activities taken on after we stop procreation is a huge
| blindspot for one thing.
|
| Someone who invents the cure for cancer but has no children
| is considered a failure by natural selection. Someone who
| never contributes anything to society but has 15 kids is
| conversely considered a huge success.
| kortex wrote:
| Not at the macro level. Natural selection isn't just about
| fitness of an individual. For example, altruism can be
| selected for, despite resulting in the sacrifice of the
| individual. It increases the fitness of their kin by
| globally reducing risk. If you extend "kinship" to "all of
| humanity", then having a pool on non-reproducing scientists
| still increases the species' fitness.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iLX_r_WPrIw
| ganzuul wrote:
| Well in terms of evolution there needs to be a set of
| instructions that gets passed on. If those instructions can
| mutate, we have evolution. Perhaps it isn't genetic code
| that gets passed on, but e.g. cultural inventions.
|
| That said, these biological circuits that we are
| considering get replicated in whatever environment that
| they exist in. Love may lead to other things than
| biological reproduction. Our lore regarding the human,
| personal experience of love and what to do with it also
| mutates and evolves. A poem then, may take the place of the
| greatest invention.
| brongondwana wrote:
| If they invent a cure and it's forgotten by future
| generations, then it is a failure. If their cure is
| remembered and passed on, then their memetic output is not
| lost, so they contributed - just not genetically.
|
| Sure genetic material can survive where culture and memory
| is lost, and evolves more slowly, but cultural
| contributions do shape the future a lot as well.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Do be careful as a 100% investment in such a strategy will
| destroy your will power. Will power is a muscle that needs to
| be exercised by doing things you don't feel like doing.
| l-lousy wrote:
| What a wonderful experiment, not only does it sound fun but also
| slightly educational
| suction wrote:
| There is nothing scientific about this "study". But another good
| example of what I call the "Cargo cult science" approach so often
| found in Japan: "We use meters to collect data and make graphs
| and wear lab coats, so we're doing the science!"
|
| It's like the Japanese watched a movie of scientists doing
| science, and just recreated what they saw without understanding
| anything that goes on beyond the surface.
|
| Why is this not science? No control group, no elimination of
| millions of variables that could affect the animal's choice of
| location, etc.
| kristopolous wrote:
| "not yet" science is more appropriate.
|
| Some things graduate to rigor, most things don't.
|
| Gotta do cheap explorations and see if it has legs unless you
| have infinite time
| sdze wrote:
| Why is it bad? It could be the beginning of a hypothesis?!
| suction wrote:
| Is it news or post worthy, is what I am questioning. I reckon
| the reason this got posted here is the popularity of all
| things Japan on dweeb boards like this one.
| yborg wrote:
| Naturally, there is no chance that it had something to do
| with the popularity of cats in general.
| skeletonjelly wrote:
| I was hoping this was going to be about how cats affect quality
| of human sleep (for selfish reasons)
| ascar wrote:
| Her being Japanese and being used to sleeping essentially on the
| floor certainly helped. Pretty sure the result would have been
| different for us westerners being used to sleep in soft beds.
|
| Couldn't help but laugh out loud when seeing the pictures.
| Especially since I thought at first it's about the cat lying on
| different spots on the bed, which can restrict your movement.
| bitwize wrote:
| Japanese people don't typically sleep on the floor, though they
| may sleep on mattresses placed on the floor (rather than
| suspended by a bedframe and box spring).
| mobiledev2014 wrote:
| The poster you're responding to said "essentially" on the
| floor. Having stayed at a traditional ryokan I'd say that's
| an accurate description. It's a very comfortable floor! But
| very different from western beds.
| grapeskin wrote:
| Sleeping on a futon (thick blanket, not a mattress) on the
| floor is pretty typical. Apparently bed vs floor is about
| half and half (blue is floor and red is mattress in this
| chart). [1]
|
| [1] https://tg-uchi.jp/topics/3807
| solarmist wrote:
| I assume parent was talking about futons on tatami which
| don't compare well with mattresses, more like cushions on a
| soft floor.
| suction wrote:
| Which the majority of Japanese people don't sleep on. They
| sleep in beds.
| rwmj wrote:
| Maybe in Tokyo, but not out in the countryside in my
| experience.
| cthalupa wrote:
| Of Japan's population of roughly 127 million, about 118
| million of them live in urban/suburban areas.
|
| Hosei University, where this researcher is from, is in
| Tokyo.
|
| So in absolute terms the statement that "The majority of
| Japanese people sleep in beds" is certainly correct. In
| context of the article, where it is being claimed that
| sleeping on a futon on top of a tatami mat is preparation
| for sleeping on the floor (and really, it isn't, but
| we'll ignore that), it is also valid. The majority of the
| Japanese populace in Japan sleeps on beds, and this
| researcher likely does as well.
|
| From anecdotal experience, most modern homes I have been
| in in Japan have only one, if any, tatami rooms. They are
| not used as bedrooms, except perhaps in the 'family
| having a sleepover in the tatami room' sort of fashion.
| Modern apartments seem to have none.
| suction wrote:
| Are you a time traveler from the 1940s? You'd be shocked to
| find out that the norm for modern Japanese people is to sleep
| in beds, sit on chairs, wear Western clothing, are able to use
| knives and forks, and watch "Bachelor"-type reality TV shows.
| I'd wager that Japanese people still sleeping on the floor
| (which in itself is a falsehood, a futon is basically a thin
| mattress) are a very small minority. Most Japanese people I
| know go to Ryokan's as a fun way to feel "like people from ages
| ago", but the next day at breakfast they all complain how much
| their bodies hurt from not sleeping in their beds.
| ascar wrote:
| Well, I have lived for 6 months in the Kansai region and also
| had a very nice guest family that I met at least every second
| weekend, also multiple times in their house. They certainly
| didn't have beds and the futon they used definitely would not
| have counted as a proper mattress for me. Maybe you draw your
| conclusions based on observations in Tokyo (westernization is
| on another level there after all, which is why I personally
| didn't enjoy Tokyo so much), but as another commenter linked
| about 50% of Japan still sleeps on futons (2014) and it was
| even 75% in 1990.
|
| Also, you could avoid the condescending tone. Especially
| since your argument is wrong. Adding that time traveling
| accusation and other examples of common westernization was
| unnecessary to make your point.
| suction wrote:
| 6 months, so you're basically a tourist, and have one piece
| of anecdotal evidence. Yet you wrote as if you have deep
| experience of modern Japanese culture - any sort of
| condescension was warranted.
| ascar wrote:
| Man your attitude is really unwarranted. Not the kind of
| comments and discourse one likes to have here.
|
| I provided anecdotal evidence (which I added because the
| tone of your comment provoked me to give evidence that I
| actually do have some relevant experience and certainly
| didn't time travel to 1940) and statistics that your
| claim "a very small minority" is wrong. Here is the link
| from a sister comment providing the data I spoke about:
|
| https://tg-uchi.jp/topics/3807
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Pretty sure the result would have been different for us
| westerners being used to sleep in soft beds.
|
| A couple of nights on a hard surface will get your body used to
| it. (Or at least, it did for me, when I rented an apartment
| where the previous occupant had outfitted the bed with a board
| to make it harder. I hurt all over after the first night. But I
| got used to it.)
| binkHN wrote:
| In my case, when I moved into a new apartment and was waiting
| on new furniture, I never got used to it. Yes, the first few
| nights were the most challenging, but the challenge never
| abated. Over a couple of months I tossed and turned way too
| often as a result of too much pressure in one spot or another
| and I started to develop rather consistent back pain almost
| daily as a result of this arrangement.
| gumby wrote:
| I spent so many nights sleeping on the floor of my office in
| the lab that I just got used to it.
|
| Then I became a backpacker and it was like I had a
| superpower.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| There's also the fact that she used a fitbit for sleep quality
| measurement.
|
| That's why her results are inconclusive. The vast majority of
| "activity" trackers don't measure sleep worth a damn.
|
| My Garmin couldn't even tell when I'd gone to bed or woken up,
| much less how well I slept.
| fruit2020 wrote:
| The forerunner 245 measures that very well.
| katbyte wrote:
| I find Apple Watch + auto sleep to be very accurate and
| automatic.
| sammalloy wrote:
| The most amazing thing to me is how a deeply sleeping cat can go
| from comatose to actively engaging in a task in a matter of a
| second if it is disturbed to the point of awakening. It's truly
| incredible. My anecdotal understanding is that the closest humans
| can get to this kind of feline state of ready alertness is in war
| time, but I think that has more to do with sleep deprivation.
| aasasd wrote:
| There's a folk belief (or maybe a legend of such belief) that
| when moving into a new house, one should let in the cat first,
| observe where they choose the resting place, and promptly install
| the bed there.
|
| I guess those people restricted the cat to the bedroom in the
| experiment, because the instruction mentioned the 'corner' where
| the cat rests, not just any place. Conveniently in this context,
| though, olden rural houses here mostly just had one big room, due
| to heating considerations in the northern winters--so no plopping
| down in the middle of the bathroom like with some cats I know.
| While in the OP, the practice was compromised by grossly
| differing dimensions of the cat and the woman.
|
| P.S.: Gotta say, the photos look like from the good old days of
| planking and such:
| http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kCJp1auybWg/Tmk0MBZaRtI/AAAAAAAABo...
| frederikvs wrote:
| There is a similar folk belief to determine where to build a
| house. If you have a plot of land, have a herd of sheep graze
| there. The spot they choose to sleep is where you should build
| your house.
|
| This of course assumes that you have a large enough plot of
| land, and no zoning laws telling you where you can and can't
| build.
| jehb wrote:
| I wonder if there's any correlation between sheep grazing
| locations and actual desirable features for building?
|
| My intuition says sheep would graze where the grass is
| greenest, which if it's like my property would be where the
| soil keeps water for longer after a rain, which would
| decidedly be a _bad_ spot to try to set my foundation. But I
| don 't necessarily live in the climate or a similar
| geological area where this folk belief originated, so now I'm
| curious.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I think we can confidently say it also requires having a
| flock of sheep or being able to borrow one for a day or so.
| Sheep as a Service for those of us who don't have a flock of
| our own?
| Melatonic wrote:
| Or do the exact opposite
|
| Every cat I have seen loves sleeping in the sun and in the
| warmest spot (assuming it is not SUPER hot out). I do not enjoy
| those things.
| cperciva wrote:
| _There 's a folk belief (or maybe a legend of such belief) that
| when moving into a new house, one should let in the cat first,
| observe where they choose the resting place, and promptly
| install the bed there._
|
| It's a very sensible belief! Cats are quite sensitive to
| drafts, so (especially in days when houses were draftier and
| lacked central heating) sleeping in the location the cat picks
| is likely to be much healthier than picking a location at
| random.
| pengaru wrote:
| My cats would have been insane guides for bed placement.
|
| They largely gravitated to wherever the sun shined the most
| on the floor, and one of them liked to jump into the fridge
| and nap in there. It was a fun party trick to have a cat
| abruptly push open and exit the refrigerator in the middle of
| dinner or a board game, but clearly not the best guide for
| where to put the bed.
| jeffh wrote:
| Wait though ... how can you make that assumption without
| actually testing it? For science!
| TylerE wrote:
| You'll sleep pretty well...once.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Hah, Schrodinger's fridge.
| cperciva wrote:
| This folk belief almost certainly originated before
| refrigerators were common fixtures in homes. ;-)
| danmur wrote:
| "good old days of planking" damn I'm old. Planking is in my
| phone's dictionary too, hahaha
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