Sleep is a behavior that is common in humans and across all animal species—a state in which awareness of the environmental stimuli is reduced. Having a good amount of sleep is an essential part of helping your body work at its best. When we sleep, our body rests, and the body uses the time to conserve energy and decrease blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and body temperature.
In animals, sleep is necessary for survival. The lack of sleep in animals leads to adverse health effects. Some research has hypothesized that birds who fly for an extended period can forgo sleep, arguing that sleep deprivation can affect certain species. However, some animals seem to survive on far less sleep than previously expected. In the article “evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight” researchers discovered that these birds could spend weeks flying non-stop over the ocean. Scientists then want to learn how these birds could be able to sleep or function while operating.
Frigate birds are a group of seabirds with long angular wings, located in the tropical and the subtropical oceans. Females frigate birds have a white chest, head, and belly while the male has a red gular pouch, which they used to attract females. Frigate birds are well known for being an excellent flyer; they can fly for days and weeks on end without ever touching ground, searching for food. Researchers want to investigate the amount and type of sleep frigate birds acquired in flight. By recording brain activity, the researchers were able to respond to their questions.
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To determine whether and how birds sleep on trips, the researcher used an electroencephalogram to measure the changes in brain activity and behavior. This device distinguishes wakefulness from the two types of sleep found in birds. “The slow-wave rest and the rapid eye movement”(Rattenborg & Voirin, 2016, p.4) . Slow-wave sleep can occur in one or both hemispheres at a time, while REM sleep only occurs in hemispherically” (Rattenborg & Voirin, 2016, p.6).
The fieldwork was carried out on an island in Galapagos, Ecuador. For this study, “they capture 15 females of the frigate birds to implant electroencephalography (EEG) into their skulls”(Rattenborg & Voirin, 2016, p.7). This device allows the researcher to measure the bird’s brain activity while they traveled for ten days over 3,000 kilometers without landing. The sensor identifies if and when the birds were asleep while they flew over the Pacific Ocean and after returning to their nest on Genovesa Island. The bird’s movement altitude was located with the GPS data logger.
The researcher recorded that during the day, the birds would stay awake and actively search for fish, but as the sunset, the birds switched into slow-wave sleep for several minutes while they continued to fly over the ocean. The birds spend an average of about 45 minutes of sleep each day in short ten seconds after dark (Rattenborg & Voirin, 2016, p.7). The REM period only lasted several seconds. Inland, frigate birds spend 12 hr sleeping each day, which means the amount of sleep these birds were acquiring while flying was less than the one they obtained by land. Hence, frigate birds could have experienced sleep-deprivation while searching for good foraging day and night: This eventuality may suggest birds are most likely to have a collision or miss out on food while sleeping. For this reason, more research needs to be done, and more investigation is needed into how birds function with little sleep.
Indeed, sleep is a vital component that every living species needs in order to survive, all though not every animal experiences sleep in the same way. In the article “evidence that birds sleep in mid0 flight” this research study reveals evidence that demonstrates frigate birds sleep with either one cerebral hemisphere at a time or both regions at once, as predicted. Frigate birds use unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, to prevent a collision, a phenomenon in which other animals such as duck and dolphins sleep with only one hemisphere of the brain at a time to watch out for potential threats.
