What’s black, white, and LOVES siestas?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Humans enjoy cat naps, particularly at our desks, but if you’re a creature out in the wild? Dozing off can make you lunch for predators. Or does it?
Enter the Chinstrap penguins of Antarctica! They can nod off almost six hundred times every hour! And yet, they’re thriving so well we know—and speak aloud—their name. Chinstrap.
Enter Paul-Antoine Libourel and a team from the Neuroscience Research Center of Lyon. They implanted recording electrodes in the penguins to monitor brain activity while video recording their naps.
And? Taking as many as TEN THOUSAND four-second naps per day, these penguins’ brains still experienced over ELEVEN hours of deep sleep activity!
Whoa, when it comes to power naps, these penguins peng-WIN!
Reference: Libourel, P-A., Lee, W.Y., Achin I., et al. Nesting chinstrap penguins accrue large quantities of sleep through seconds-long microsleeps. Science 382, 1026 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh0771