Elephants sleep less than all terrestrial mammals.
African elephants sleep on average about two hours per day, which is the lowest value among all animals. They also regularly spend up to two days without sleep.
About it it is reported in a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE.
There are indications that animals of large size require less time to sleep. African elephants are the largest modern land animals, however, many studies of elephant dream were not in their natural habitat or did not allow to accurately distinguish sleep from rest.
To remedy these shortcomings, a group of scientists from the University of South Africa watched two elephants-matriarchs in the Chobe national Park for 35 days. Animals were equipped with activity detectors in the trunks and collars with a gyroscope to track the position of the body during sleep. On average, elephants sleep 2 hours a day, spend up to 46 hours without sleep and were held to 30 kilometers during that time, probably, undisturbed by the lions or poachers. They also found that they sleep lying down every few nights. This limits the potential duration of REM sleep (the phase of rapid eye movement — rapid eye movement, approx. Indicator.Ru), which raises the question of when the elephants are in this state.
“Sleep study captive elephants indicate that they sleep from 4 to 6 hours a day, however, our study of free-living animals demonstrates a two-hour sleep, which appears to be related to the size of their bodies”, — commented on the work of lead author Paul Munger.
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