Talk:Sleep in animals

Translation

Is this a translation from the swedish article? 213.115.186.132 (talk) 10:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it started out that way anyway. We've changed a bit about the seals, to conform to the references given. (I fell in love with Nitramus' article, Sömn hos djur, but I'm not good enough in Swedish, so I recruited a translator here.)

I see that the Swedish article has some new photos, some of which we should borrow. --Hordaland (talk) 13:55, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

And now, over a year later, I discover there's even a template for translation from (see above). I learn something new every day....... - Hordaland (talk) 00:44, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

sleep duration line makes no sense

In herbivores, an inverse correlation is apparent between body mass and sleep length; big animals sleep more than smaller ones.

Ok I'm not an expert here, but this makes no sense to me. Is it an inverse correlation or a positive one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.149.184.246 (talk) 12:18, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge suggestion

There is a merge suggestion on this page. It reads "It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into [[:|Sleep patterns#Sleep in non-humans]]. (Discuss) Proposed since June 2012." The "Discuss" isn't clickable, so I'll discuss here.

I think both articles are long enough as it is, and the division is logical.

--Hordaland (talk) 07:09, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. In fact, in the hope of saving work for everybody, I've gone ahead and boldly removed the template. If anybody feels that a full discussion is necessary, please feel free to put the template back. Looie496 (talk) 02:34, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I third. Frankly I think if anything human sleep should be separate, not nonhuman sleep, as humans only make up a tiny fraction of the animals that sleep. 72.251.19.136 (talk) 07:30, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Unihemispheric sleep

In the cat experiment, it is mentioned that the brain stem is cut into half. How can the brain stem be cut into half? I suppose it is the corpus callosum that is cut into half. Will someone check on the cat experiment?

Haaaa (talk) 09:13, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't exactly say "cut in half". It says "the connection between the left and the right halves of the brain stem has been severed...".

The reference title in English is "Chronic split brain stem preparation: Effect on the sleep-waking cycle". The brain stem is split.

Anyone wanting to check the reference, must be able to read French.

--Hordaland (talk) 10:35, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not that hard, I think you just expose the brain stem and then run a scalpel down the middle of it. Looie496 (talk) 23:25, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Shrews

I learnt that shrews have extremely little sleep, in the order of minutes rather than hours. Is this right? Shouldn't the article mention that? Steinbach (talk) 13:10, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Article-Image Disagreement

The article says a jellyfish "is the most primitive organism in which sleep-like states have been observed." The image next to it says a nematode "is the most primitive organism in which sleep-like states have been observed." Which of these is more "primitive." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ambroginogiusti (talk • contribs) 18:49, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

If we translate "more primitive" as "evolutionarily more distant from vertebrates", then jellyfish are more primitive, as they are not bilaterians. If we are asking which species is more complex, I think that would be difficult. (The discovery of sleep in jellyfish is quite recent, by the way.) Looie496 (talk) 20:24, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 3 October 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 21:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

---

Sleep in non-human animals → sleep in animals – This article discusses sleep in all animals, humans included, so the title is inaccurate. Fish567 (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Which begs the question, how does this differ from Sleep in plants, Sleep in bacteria, Sleep in fungi and so on? Isn't sleep something specific to animals? We do have Sleep in fish. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 16:52, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose: This article could reasonably be called Sleep, but Sleep is an article about sleep in humans, which is undoubtedly the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The current title of this article is intended as natural disambiguation, which would not be achieved by Sleep in animals. We need to convey that this is the article about sleep generally rather than human sleep. The brief references to humans in this article are by way of comparison. The current title does seem clumsy, but I don't see a great solution. Sleep (non-human animals)? Sleep (generally)? Sleep (sensu lato)? Havelock Jones (talk) 16:58, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Sleep (non-human) would do. No need to specify animals since no organisms other than animals sleep. 2600:1700:E660:9D60:CC56:97F:33B7:4295 (talk) 21:28, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• It's actually been a topic of debate for hundreds of years about whether plants "sleep" in any capacity; arguments against this have included that it attempts to force a continuity between plants and animals and thus is a false analogy, while arguments for it have included that plants do have a form of circadian rhythm. Either way, the theory isn't so fringe that coverage would be undue. BilledMammal (talk) 00:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose: Sleep is specifically about human sleep, and this shouldn't mention humans. That's easily done:

• cut reference 1 and reference 48, the statements are each supported by another reference
• change "diurnal organisms (such as humans)" to "diurnal animals (such as horses)" or just cut the parenthesis. Especially since the advent of efficient artificial lighting, lots of humans are not diurnal anyway.
• cut the sentence starting "Humans sleep less than many other omnivores" or move it to Sleep
• remove humans from the list at "Comparative average sleep periods for various mammals (in captivity) over 24 hours" – in any case, I am not sure that, in Orwell's words "unless you are in a prison or a holiday camp", humans can generally be described as being in captivity.

and you're done. 85.67.32.244 (talk) 17:06, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support. It is consistent with existing titles to use the word "animal". See e.g. Pain in animals, Emotion in animals, Monogamy in animals, Animal consciousness. Such articles focus on animals as opposed to humans (often surveying a wide variety of animals), while not completely excluding humans (since it's often appropriate to mention similarities and differences between humans and other animals). Using the word "animal" in the title correctly reflects this predominant but non-exclusive focus. Dictionaries recognize that "animal" can include human beings (e.g. Oxford English Dictionary definition 1a) and can mean animals other than human beings (OED 1b). "Animal" is concise and natural, and should be preferred over "non-human" or "non-human animal", which try too hard to be precise. Adumbrativus (talk) 02:12, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose we are also animals, others mentioned by Adumbrativus should probably be moved, being precise is more important than being a bit less concise. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC:

  The article does discuss sleep in humans however, so the title is not accurate. Fish567 (talk) 16:00, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support: as Adumbrativus said, it's consistent with other naming. For more examples: animal communication, animal sexual behaviour, animal tooth development, Animal psychopathology. Further, the more specific "non-human animals" isn't very useful because anyone that was looking for sleep in non-human animals is probably going to go to sleep in animals first - that's part of why we have WP:PRECISION and WP:CONCISE (see: maxim of quantity). More specifically, all of these example are related to bio/psychology articles, where we often find ourselves with an article on X, and another for X in animals more generally. This is in part because reasonably frequently, especially with psychology, the topic does just more commonly refer to it in humans (a classic case of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC). For a lot of these X in animals articles, the WP:COMMONNAME does specify animal - for sleep specifically, that has been my experience. I love to have a lecture called "sleep in animals". Finally, when you're writing about sleep (or a similar topic) in animals, you also do have to use humans as an example. Its our strongest reference point scientifically in these fields and its also the easiest for readers to understand. So it's not really advisable to cut out all of the references to humans just so we can use a clunkier name that violates a conversational maxim and WP policy. --Xurizuri (talk) 10:43, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support per my nomination. As I've said, sleep in humans is discussed here too. And sleep in animals redirects here. Fish567 (talk) 12:15, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
• Support per WP:CONCISE and WP:CONSISTENCY with other articles as mentioned above. -- Calidum 14:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• support per WP:CONCISE, WP:CONSISTENCY, and per Adumbrativus. —usernamekiran (talk) (guestbook) 20:16, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Animals without sleep rebound mechanisms do exist

"If sleep were not essential, one would expect to find: Animal species that do not sleep at all Animals that do not need recovery sleep after staying awake longer than usual Animals that suffer no serious consequences as a result of lack of sleep' Outside of a few basal animals that have no brain or a very simple one, no animals have been found to date that satisfy any of these criteria "

The paper cited to claim that no animals have been found to satisfy these criteria is outdated. A more recent paper found no evidence for a sleep rebound mechanism in the freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis. 2601:880:C000:55E0:0:0:0:8C2D (talk) 15:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Also, pelagic fishes like tuna that are active swimmers their whole life, doesn't seem to sleep either. Rhynchosaur (talk) 15:51, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Way too many pictures

I counted 24 or 25 images of sleeping animals in the article, in addition to pictures of an insect and a nematode. About three images of sleeping animals should be more than enough. Rhynchosaur (talk) 15:51, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Pictures help improve readability, and there aren't so many in this article that they start to impede readability, so I don't see why this is a problem. 204.58.180.206 (talk) 22:34, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Confusing wording

There's this phrase in the invertebrates section, "Decade after decade results mounted that insects do sleep," which I just cannot parse. Is there supposed to be an "of" in between decade and results? Mounted also seems like an unclear and unusual word choice. 204.58.180.206 (talk) 22:42, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

What about jelly fish and Hydra?

Jelly fish and Hydra do sleep. So the knowledge of living things with brain sleep is false. 122.11.212.28 (talk) 08:47, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

gruesome

I don't think detailing gruesome studies involving torture of animals for scientific research purposes is really the vibe we should be going for

what else would you call slicing animals up and observing their behavior? thats torture, and this page is full of it

yeah, we might lose a little bit of nuance or explorative research, but honestly? I didn't come here to read about how people sliced and shocked animals to get them to do weird things for us to study

i came here to read about unihemispheric sleep

not callously cruel horrific details of various science experiments that really add very little to the article 74.221.63.60 (talk) 14:55, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

like, theres PLENTY of information and discussion throughout the page without this violent repulsive theme 74.221.63.60 (talk) 14:56, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Cathemerality

"The three categories of biological sleep schedules are diurnal, nocturnal, and crepuscular which characterize species whose waking periods mostly overlap with day, night, and twilight respectively."

-lead section of Sleep in animals

The way this is currently phrased sounds like it's an exhaustive list. It goes on to mention there's variation in specific sleep patterns and durations, but it reads to me like those differences would still fall largely within those three basic types.

I was reading the article specifically because I was trying to remember what the term was for the pattern where an animal is often both active and asleep during both day and night - the word I was looking for was cathemeral:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathemerality

"Many animals do not fit the traditional definitions of being strictly nocturnal, diurnal, or crepuscular, often driven by factors that include the availability of food, predation pressure, and variable ambient temperature.[3] Although cathemerality is not as widely observed in individual species as diurnality or nocturnality, this activity pattern is seen across the mammal taxa, such as in lions, coyotes, and lemurs.[4]"

-lead section of Cathemerality

I'm not versed enough in the topic to really assess whether cathemeral is significant and categorically comparable enough that it ought to be directly included in the sentence I quoted at the start, but the way it's currently phrased seems a bit oversimplified/absolute. And cathemerality seems common, established, and relevant enough that it would probably merit mentioning somewhere within this article?

Apostatlet (talk) 08:32, 11 May 2026 (UTC)