[HN Gopher] Reindeer Sleep and Eat Simultaneously
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Reindeer Sleep and Eat Simultaneously
Author : gmays
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-12-27 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| roldie wrote:
| As the article mentions, between these reindeer sleeping while
| they eat and penguins sleeping for 4 seconds at a time, it's
| pretty amazing what we're learning about how animals sleep. I
| wonder if humans can ever learn to use these "other" means of
| sleep
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Babies "dream feed", so maybe it's that we forget how to do
| things.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Or become physiologically incapable of it. But that might
| just be "forgetting."
| Solvency wrote:
| As a recent parent of a 3 month old the stupidity of our
| evolutionary design baffles me. Why do you have to
| laboriously teach babies to fall asleep, stay asleep, etc.
| Even in contact naps where they should theoretically feel
| absolutely safe and biologically cared for. The sheer amount
| of absolutely ridiculous life draining energy that goes into
| getting a baby to do basic primitive biological things is
| crazy.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Why do you have to laboriously teach babies [basic
| survival things]
|
| Because we are born prematurely. Our brain wouldn't fit
| through the birth canal if we were born later with more
| basic skills baked in. So instead we finish a big part of
| our early development outside the womb.
| AeroNotix wrote:
| Marsupials also use this tactic.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| We changed a million things about our environment and a
| couple of those things turned out to be important.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| There's the "uber sleep" method or whatever it's called. Made
| the rounds in my circle of friends in like...2007ish?
|
| Basically you force yourself to only take 4 15 minute naps a
| day. A utterly hellish thing to do, but eventually your brain
| figures out that you've decided to terrorize it and will
| instantly dip into REM the moment you fall asleep, and you'll
| wake up feeling rested and only need to sleep an hour a day.
|
| I personally tried this for a bit and it kinda sorta works, but
| it's awful to get started, and the first time you sleep more
| than 15 minutes you're going to break the trend and revert, and
| who knows what long term effects it has on people.
|
| Sleep in general is one of those really interesting areas of
| biology that we still don't get.
| chch wrote:
| I was actually just talking about this yesterday!
|
| That schedule I'd read about was the Uberman schedule, where
| you sleep 20-30 minutes six times a day. Definitely a much
| more extreme form than most polyphasic sleep schedules. :)
|
| I read a series of blog posts about it, probably around the
| same time as you did, and found them again [1] last night. I
| didn't actually read through it again, but if anyone's
| interested in reading more about someone's firsthand
| experience with it, could be a good classic read.
|
| [1] https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/
| lm28469 wrote:
| Can't find the study right now but these alternative sleep
| schedules absolutely destroy your growth hormone release, and
| probably a few other mechanisms
| richbell wrote:
| This is what I've read as well.
|
| I can't remember where, but I was listening to a guy talk
| about his sleep disorder and one of the main symptoms he
| described was being able to instantly fall into REM.
| ModernMech wrote:
| In grad school I developed a sleep every other day lifestyle.
| Would not recommend.
| scrozart wrote:
| Sleeping in more than one long chunk of time is called
| polyphasic sleeping [0]. It's postulated that sleeping in one
| go is an industrial age phenomenon.
|
| Anecdotal, but I embraced a mild form of this during college,
| using "Einstein naps" (brief naps ended just after dozing) for
| a recharge between my work day and night classes. I experienced
| nitably improved focus and less evening burnout.
|
| 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
| blowski wrote:
| Many new parents know how invigorating a 10 second nap can
| be.
| saalweachter wrote:
| It's crazy how you go two, three months and then when you
| get four hours in a row you wake up feeling amazing, newly
| clear-headed, and knowing you got objectively bad sleep you
| wonder how messed up you were before.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Maybe it's also a caffeine thing. When I'm off of caffeine I
| can take multiple daytime naps. They feel great and are very
| refreshing. When I'm drinking caffeine it's hard enough just
| to get to sleep at the end of the day.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| Another drastic example of animal sleep being very different
| from ours is dolphins. Dolphins sleep "one hemisphere at a
| time".
|
| > Research has shown that dolphins are able to sleep with only
| half of their brain at a time, a phenomenon known as
| unihemispheric slow-wave sleep (USWS). During USWS, one
| hemisphere of the brain remains active while the other
| hemisphere rests. This allows dolphins to continue swimming,
| surfacing for air, and avoiding predators while still getting
| the rest they need.
|
| Try _that_! :-)
| verytrivial wrote:
| Ducks apparently do half-brain sleeping too. If I recall
| correctly it has something to do with sitting side by side,
| and that they can let the half on their brain not attached to
| the "look-out" eye rest.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| > While the animals chew their cud, they also enter a state of
| rest
|
| Can you imagine if you could sleep anytime you started chewing
| gum?
| araes wrote:
| Go to a restaurant, start munching down on a salad, and your
| eyes glaze over. Actually, having been to a lot of buffets, I
| think some people really do go into torpor.
| monetus wrote:
| I remember reading years ago about EEGs showing daytime cable
| TV viewers can lull into a relaxed state similar to people
| who are half asleep or meditating.
| tiahura wrote:
| Me too. Every morning there's a pile of junk food wrappers in my
| kitchen.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Do you have any recollection of snacking at night? If you
| don't, you're likely to suffer from a sleep eating disorder.
| thegabriele wrote:
| 64 slices of american cheese?
| xrd wrote:
| You beat me to it and yours was better anyway. Drat.
| GypsyKing716 wrote:
| So they are zombies.
| rayrrr wrote:
| If they can do that, who's to say they can't fly?
| kazinator wrote:
| Reindeer are honorary Americans!
| danans wrote:
| That reminds me of the plots of certain Seinfeld episodes where
| George or Kramer combine life functions that would normally be
| kept separate.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Just thought I'd document my experience going onto this site:
|
| * I load the page, everything looks normal
|
| * suddenly a massive video advert appears at the top of the
| screen, taking up half the screen and shifting all the content
| down
|
| * another video advert appears at the bottom of the screen,
| stealing another 10% of the screen
|
| * I start scrolling: the top advert is sticky and covers up the
| article headline. I can now see nothing apart from a part of a
| reindeer's head
|
| * I scroll some more
|
| * Chrome pops up a box telling me that the website wants to know
| my location
|
| * I scroll some more and encounter yet another inline advert. My
| screen is now almost entirely adverts
|
| * I scroll some more and the inline advert becomes a mini-player
| in the bottom-right of the screen
|
| * There are now 4 separate adverts on my screen, all videos
|
| * I give up and leave the page
| graemep wrote:
| With JS off everything looks normal and stays normal.
| wombat-man wrote:
| yeah this works, but it is wild to think that this is what
| some people experience of the web if they have no knowledge
| of ad blockers or js blocker.
| tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote:
| I use the content blocker Ka-Block in Safari iOS and see no
| ads.
| leosanchez wrote:
| None of that happens with Firefox and ublock on Android
| RangerScience wrote:
| None of the happens with Javascript turned off on the page (and
| the article is fully available)
| johnny_canuck wrote:
| Give Brave browser a shot - it blocks ads out of the box and
| the experience is just as described in your first point.
| xuhu wrote:
| You can contact the website operators, but they will probably
| suggest you install an ad blocker so that the page loads
| correctly.
| aendruk wrote:
| Thanks for the warning. To spare the next reader, here's a
| direct link to the primary source--
|
| https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)...
|
| --and the key quote from the abstract:
|
| _We studied sleep using non-invasive EEG [...] Surprisingly,
| slow-wave activity decreased not only during NREM sleep but
| also during rumination. [...] Reindeer spent less time in NREM
| sleep the more they ruminated. These results suggest that they
| can sleep during rumination. The ability to reduce sleep need
| during rumination--undisturbed phases for both sleep recovery
| and digestion--might allow for near-constant feeding in the
| arctic summer._
| harywilke wrote:
| Welcome to the modern web. It sucks. See all the comments (well
| intended, but illustrative of how bad the default experience
| is): "Use this defensive technique to keep the hordes of hell
| from your experience".
| verytrivial wrote:
| Well, "eat" is used in a general way here to include "ruminating
| on cud". I would perhaps think that's more like "digest" than
| eat, so while interesting, to me it more says the rumination
| activity is more automatic than previously thought.
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(page generated 2023-12-27 23:00 UTC)