Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm a senior writer
Speaker 1: here at how stuff works dot com. And with me
Speaker 1: today is Julie Douglas, who is a longtime writer, editor,
Speaker 1: pyrotechnician here at how stuff works dot com. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast, Julie, Thanks Robert, I'm really excited to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be uh taking the podcast often an entirely
Speaker 1: different trajectory now. You know, previously we were stuff in
Speaker 1: the science lab. Now we're stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a a joy division to new order,
Speaker 1: Um Jefferson Airplane to Jefferson Starship kind of shift here.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the old version was great, but the
Speaker 1: new version is going to be even more amazing. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean we have everything from like our cat's shape
Speaker 1: shifters to why are we existing here in this world?
Speaker 1: In this universe? I mean, we're just gonna open the
Speaker 1: portal and we're gonna start the new iteration. Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get this started. Yeah, let's do it. As it happens,
Speaker 1: we are both cat owners so we are very familiar
Speaker 1: with the site of a cat in its various stages
Speaker 1: of sleep, which it seems like they have many, just
Speaker 1: based on their their bodily position, right, It's true, they're elaborate. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I really love watching my cat in slumber, and I
Speaker 1: look at him sometimes and think, oh my god, why
Speaker 1: can't I be you? It just seems so like the
Speaker 1: master of the universe here in your sixteen hours of
Speaker 1: various positions of sleep. Yeah, we refer to them to
Speaker 1: our cats sleep levels based on what kind of bread
Speaker 1: product she resembles. So there's like bread mode where she
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a loaf of bread, and then
Speaker 1: of course when she gets really relaxed, she goes into
Speaker 1: full on bagel mode, where she's like, you know, very circular,
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a cinnamon bun. Wow. So, and
Speaker 1: and they do sleep a lot. In fact, let's see,
Speaker 1: what's the uh be terrible for cats? It's like fifty
Speaker 1: point six percent of the day give or take leopards
Speaker 1: of like twelve point one hours. Yeah, yeah, And I
Speaker 1: would definitely say my cats more like maybe on the
Speaker 1: sixteen hour. And he's seriously just doesn't do a whole lot.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's because he's a main
Speaker 1: con and he's like this twenty six pound um cat.
Speaker 1: That's you know, like I said, the master of the universe. Um,
Speaker 1: he can do whatever he wants. So if he wants
Speaker 1: to sleep for sixteen hours, it's going to happen. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting because obviously most humans with you know,
Speaker 1: jobs and and you know responsibilities, don't sleep twelve hours
Speaker 1: a day. Um. Yeah, so it's more like in the
Speaker 1: six to eight range. And you see a wide variety
Speaker 1: of sleep patterns throughout the animal kingdom. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what we're gonna be chatting about today. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, do all animals sleep? And what does that
Speaker 1: consist of for different members of the animal kingdom? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And why do our cats sleep so much? Yeah? That's
Speaker 1: you know, I think that is actually a universal question
Speaker 1: that has got to be as words. So we're going
Speaker 1: to try to do that by first approaching sleep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is sleep? Sleep? I think that obviously it's really important.
Speaker 1: It is profoundly important on our existence and how we
Speaker 1: operate physically, mentally, emotionally. Um, and I think that we
Speaker 1: take it for granted but and we think, Okay, we
Speaker 1: just close our eyes and we wake up and we
Speaker 1: get going. Um. In fact, there's so much more going on,
Speaker 1: and I think that we kind of need to revisit
Speaker 1: the basics really quickly just to get an idea of
Speaker 1: how complex sleep is. So you so let's just do
Speaker 1: a quick recap. I'm sure we've all heard this in
Speaker 1: school at one point or another, but you know that
Speaker 1: there's stage one, which is the lightest sleep, and that's
Speaker 1: when we kind of start to relax our muscles a
Speaker 1: little bit. And is this the point where you're you're
Speaker 1: reading your book at night and you suddenly start reading
Speaker 1: words that aren't actually in the book. Yeah, they all
Speaker 1: start to sort of melt together. And this is also
Speaker 1: the point to where you feel like, well, they're like,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, feels so great. You know that little voice
Speaker 1: in your head I think, so I fallen asleep, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: tripping or falling. Um, And that's really your muscles sort
Speaker 1: of working themselves out. So that's stage one, and stage
Speaker 1: two is when your breathing patterns and your heart rates
Speaker 1: start to slow down a little bit. And your body
Speaker 1: temperature takes a little bit of a dip. And then
Speaker 1: stage three or when the delta waves start to roll
Speaker 1: in and lull you into a deeper sleep, although you're
Speaker 1: still sort of fighting with that lighter sleep. And then
Speaker 1: stage four is known as the delta sleep, which, um,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you should really say the adult asleep
Speaker 1: because it you know, it's that really slow wave. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's when you're getting thirty minutes of truly deep sleep.
Speaker 1: And that is also when you're capable of sleep walking.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So I don't know if you ever sleepwalked
Speaker 1: when you were a little No, I don't think I did.
Speaker 1: Know I did a lot, and so my parents would
Speaker 1: see me cruising through the house like three am, and
Speaker 1: my hands would be up like Frankenstein. So I literally
Speaker 1: thought I was Frankenstein. I was rolling around the house
Speaker 1: like that. But wait, in the dreams or just as
Speaker 1: a child, you were convinced you were Frankenstein in the dream.
Speaker 1: In the dream, yeah, I mean, because kids are weird,
Speaker 1: I could you know, that's kind of awesome. I kind
Speaker 1: of wish that I had been a kid who thought
Speaker 1: that she was Frankenstein because I could really freak out
Speaker 1: the neighbors and just dream fire. Um. That sounded like
Speaker 1: Robert de Niro's Frankenstein. Sorry about that. Um. And then
Speaker 1: stage five is when remickers. So that's when you're dreaming, um.
Speaker 1: And that's when you're really working things out, all that
Speaker 1: data that you've processed throughout the day. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: also where you might be having a dream that's say
Speaker 1: a dog is mauling your face, god forbid, and a
Speaker 1: dog might be having a dream where it's mauling a
Speaker 1: humans face exactly. Yes, yeah, and total totally parallel dreams
Speaker 1: at the same time. And the cool thing about this
Speaker 1: is that, uh, you have a sort of built in mechanism,
Speaker 1: paralysis mechanism to make sure that you don't freak out
Speaker 1: during that time period, so that dog doesn't leap out
Speaker 1: and try to bite in its dream and I don't
Speaker 1: try to you know, take the dog off of me
Speaker 1: and smash it or interesting. So like that. So many
Speaker 1: of these episodes you hear about where like somebody's having
Speaker 1: a dream and they start like strangling their spouse or
Speaker 1: something like you know, um, like that's not in this
Speaker 1: stage then no, No, I think there's something else going on. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think I'm probably thinking of Ozzy Osborne. So well,
Speaker 1: you have to wonder too if there are certain medications
Speaker 1: or substances that might be messing with the natural rhythms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that Azzy was ever on anything,
Speaker 1: but no, no, yeah, I mean that's that's pretty far
Speaker 1: fetched for him. But yes, so you never know. That's, um,
Speaker 1: there's certainly external forces that could be acting on that. Okay.
Speaker 1: So there, So we're in this stage, we're dreaming the
Speaker 1: brains being cleared up, and we're going through these stages
Speaker 1: about ninety minutes every ninety minutes, so there's a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff that's going on, and we're also kind of
Speaker 1: flailing around, moving around. I think I've read a stat
Speaker 1: somewhere that we move around at least seven times per hour.
Speaker 1: So it's not the it's not just the slumber that
Speaker 1: we think of. That's all peaceful and you know, the
Speaker 1: cats called up by your head. I need that staff
Speaker 1: next time I'm kicked out of bed at three in
Speaker 1: the morning from moving too much. Yeah, yeah, see that
Speaker 1: that would be helpful maybe maybe, Yeah, I mean probably
Speaker 1: can't like actually present the stats at three in the morning,
Speaker 1: be like, whoa wait, slow down, check out this review,
Speaker 1: this the study, and the Scientific American. I'm totally supposed
Speaker 1: to move around. You should be concerned if I'm not
Speaker 1: kicking you in my sleep, you know. Yeah, on second FID,
Speaker 1: that might exacerbating the situation. UM. So it's good to
Speaker 1: have an understanding of just what basically what sleep is,
Speaker 1: because that's the model that we use UM to study
Speaker 1: other animals, other creatures. We know about theta waves delta waves,
Speaker 1: so you know that when they go into these slow
Speaker 1: low wave states, that there that their brains are preoccupy
Speaker 1: hid and that they're dreaming or sleeping, and that's what
Speaker 1: we assume at least. So taking that data, we can
Speaker 1: now look at say our cats, and UM measure whether
Speaker 1: or not they are actually dreaming. And though it's obvious
Speaker 1: to us, especially when they're twitching around and chasing mice
Speaker 1: or whatever they're doing in the dream UM, but that
Speaker 1: still doesn't necessarily answer why they are sleeping so much. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's something that we can look at a little
Speaker 1: bit closer. But I think within the case of our cats,
Speaker 1: it may be that we've kind of done everything for
Speaker 1: them and I'm going to go out all in here
Speaker 1: because they don't necessarily have type from predators. They have
Speaker 1: a food source, so they're all nice and cush you.
Speaker 1: So it's some people say that maybe just that they
Speaker 1: don't have, um, the impetus there too to be more
Speaker 1: of a predator themselves and spend more time awake. Well,
Speaker 1: certainly for indoor totally indoor cats that would be the case.
Speaker 1: Are still goes outside and kills things and probably us
Speaker 1: to avoid things every now and so. So that might
Speaker 1: be why you're cat sleeping twelve hours and my cat
Speaker 1: is landing around for sixteen hours. Oh yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, hey, there's nothing going on here, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go into the chipmunk dream. Yeah exactly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of boring here that or sometimes I think of
Speaker 1: the movie Inception. Okay, sometimes I think that my cats
Speaker 1: just kind of practicing to um put some sort of
Speaker 1: thoughts in my subconscious when I'm make sure I'm dreaming.
Speaker 1: They probably are. Is that is that crazy cat lady
Speaker 1: talk a little bit? But I mean, you spend enough
Speaker 1: time with a cats, those those guys are weird. Um
Speaker 1: the thank you for comforting me. Well, the other thing
Speaker 1: about cats and their predator nature. I've I've read some
Speaker 1: some arguments that if society were fall apart um and
Speaker 1: you know, in humans were gone the next day, like
Speaker 1: you know, all the cats would obviously go feral. But
Speaker 1: but domestic cats would have a better shot at surviving
Speaker 1: as a species because they continue these rehearsals for you know,
Speaker 1: for predation. You know, they're uh, they continue to even
Speaker 1: if they're not hunting there, you know, they're attacking things
Speaker 1: in your living room. You know, they're they're continuing the exercises.
Speaker 1: It's like a constant terrorist training camp in your living room,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and and while dogs many breeds of dogs,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like we'd be there, um you know,
Speaker 1: perverted their natural hunting instincts into something ridiculous you know
Speaker 1: where you know it ends up with we end up
Speaker 1: like my parents, with a college that wants to bark
Speaker 1: at trees, you know, and they don't really have us.
Speaker 1: They don't have a skill set anymore. You know, they'd
Speaker 1: be as useless as writers and the apocalypse. You know, wow,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, I don't know writers could they
Speaker 1: could do They could take their pencils. They don't even
Speaker 1: use pencils anyone, am I saying, Yeah, you're right, they
Speaker 1: would language with the dogs, they would begin barking in
Speaker 1: the trees. Yeah, well I don't know. So we we
Speaker 1: have animals that are clocking in a lot of sleep,
Speaker 1: a little sleep. Yeah, yeah, they're they're kind of all
Speaker 1: over the board. Like we mentioned the cat is coming
Speaker 1: in it kind of like fifth half the day roughly.
Speaker 1: And uh, and we should mention that you'll find varying
Speaker 1: figures on all of this out there on the net
Speaker 1: because you know, sometimes it's like a domestic animals sleep
Speaker 1: or or you know, a captive animal sleep patterns versus
Speaker 1: the wild animals sleep patterns. And you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get a lot of sleep when someone is trying
Speaker 1: to eat you. Yeah, that's true. And that makes sense
Speaker 1: too because the ones that are captive, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to measure some animals and and so yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them would have to be captive in order
Speaker 1: to get some data off of them, like um at
Speaker 1: the like at the low end of the spectrum. Um,
Speaker 1: Like it's hard to beat the giraffe, which is like
Speaker 1: almost two hours a day and you know, which is
Speaker 1: about seven point nine percent of the day. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you see other like the horse is really low
Speaker 1: at two point nine hours, the donkey at three point
Speaker 1: one hours um. And which is kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: I guess you, like some of these animals, you're thinking,
Speaker 1: these guys are always on the run, you know, or
Speaker 1: they've got to always be ready to to to you know,
Speaker 1: to just take off at any moment to avoid a predator.
Speaker 1: So they've apparently evolved, you know, into this state where
Speaker 1: they just really don't need much sleep. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of odd because the giraffe I understood.
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, if I'm a giraffe and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: out in the wild, I'm going to be scared that
Speaker 1: something's got to you know, put its teeth into my
Speaker 1: neck or or why not. But the cow not necessarily. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the cows one that we've it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the dogs. We've really perverted the species over time
Speaker 1: to where they're you know, they really don't have anything
Speaker 1: to worry about. But maybe like some you know, original
Speaker 1: version of the cow was more survival you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this makes sense, Yeah, absolutely, And then I thought it
Speaker 1: was really cool about the giraffe too. Is that they
Speaker 1: sleep sometimes I get five minutes at a time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and then they're really efficient sleepers, so they're not
Speaker 1: kind of peddling around with the stage one and they're
Speaker 1: not having dreams about tripping or you know, falling. They
Speaker 1: get like straight into deep sleep, which I really admire.
Speaker 1: I want to try to cultivate that for myself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They've Yeah, they've really just completely streamlined the process to
Speaker 1: get right to the goods, the bare minimum to remain functional, insane,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. Yeah, they're like the Martha Stewart I
Speaker 1: think of the animal Kingdom. They're just they're being very
Speaker 1: efficient about how they spend their time sleeping. Well, you
Speaker 1: know the the elephant that was pretty high up there,
Speaker 1: and that's you know what's trying to eat an elephant? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there is also the brown bat. Oh, the brown
Speaker 1: bats on the the other end of the spectrum. Eighty
Speaker 1: two point nine percent of the day, nineteen point nine
Speaker 1: hours of sleep. Yeah, those suckers are I mean, they
Speaker 1: are layabouts. Yeah, I mean you can think. The thing
Speaker 1: I was reading about the brown bat is that a
Speaker 1: their flyers and to fly with wings in this world
Speaker 1: is it just requires a huge amount of energy. Like
Speaker 1: that's why one of the reasons you don't have airplanes
Speaker 1: with flapping wings because you know, it might look cool
Speaker 1: in the uh, you know, in the sci fi movies
Speaker 1: or the you know, the cartoons, but it would require
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of energy that just doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: when you have propellers. Bats don't have propellers, so they
Speaker 1: got a flap and by flapping, uh, you know, to
Speaker 1: get things, you know, rolling in the air, they're expending
Speaker 1: a lot of energy and they're eating like mosquitoes and stuff.
Speaker 1: So sometimes the best course of action is to just
Speaker 1: turn it off for nineteen hours. Yeah, and that would
Speaker 1: make sense to you that they might hide themselves away
Speaker 1: from predators or yeah, you know, or if the mascues
Speaker 1: were only going to be out for a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, that's right. Most of your bats are
Speaker 1: seeking shelter in you know, high trees or in caves,
Speaker 1: and they'll be in a situation where they really don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about predators so much, either due to
Speaker 1: their location or their numbers. Yeah. Another creature animal on
Speaker 1: this list, um is the tree sloth, which is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite animals. I think. Um, I don't even
Speaker 1: know how to describe what it looks like other than
Speaker 1: just like a hairy looking alien, ye, kind of a
Speaker 1: mossy hairy alien, like a mumpy even too. I mean
Speaker 1: it's like the Muppet that just didn't make the cut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, they kind of like somber face kind
Speaker 1: of cute, like not the baby slots are really cute, obviously,
Speaker 1: but we had the adults. They're yeah, they they're kind
Speaker 1: of like Muppets. Yeah yeah, and it's maybe like it's
Speaker 1: cute but menacing at the same time, which is I
Speaker 1: think why it wouldn't have made the Muppet cut, you know.
Speaker 1: But anyway, their their name Slaus obviously because um they're
Speaker 1: thought of is well not just thought it. But they
Speaker 1: are very slow moving creatures but um in captivity to
Speaker 1: actually sleep for fourteen hours, but in the while they
Speaker 1: sleep for ten hours, so that really mirrors more of
Speaker 1: our own activity. Um. So I think just just I
Speaker 1: can clear up their name a little bit because they're
Speaker 1: already saddled with the Moniker slough. I just want to
Speaker 1: get that out there for the sloth world. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little shout out. Now, Human infants are pretty high to
Speaker 1: sixty sixty six point seven percent of the day sixteen hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're crazy high, which makes sense, um, because think of
Speaker 1: I mean again, we got we've talked about the data
Speaker 1: that you're processing during sleep, and just think of all
Speaker 1: the stimuli. You know, you've been shut in the womb
Speaker 1: for almost ten months. Yeah, like everything is new, lights different,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, some sound is familiar, but some sound isn't.
Speaker 1: So it's uh, it's building that database that they have
Speaker 1: to do. So I don't know. Um, are there any
Speaker 1: creatures that require zero sleep for different types of sleep?
Speaker 1: How does that work? Well, that's that's the question. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean there are There are certainly animals that, for starters,
Speaker 1: can disrupt their normal sleeping patterns for certain special events.
Speaker 1: You know, like migratory birds. You know, they they've got
Speaker 1: a suddenly put into overdrive travel long distances that they
Speaker 1: can they can alter how much sleep they need. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: fish and amphibians are these are some of the creatures
Speaker 1: that were still not completely sure on whether they're sleeping
Speaker 1: or not, or if they're just you know, exhibiting resting signs. Um.
Speaker 1: And again the typical like signs of sleep. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like you generally you're looking for reduction and physical activity,
Speaker 1: discrete decreased response to outside sim stimuli um. And you
Speaker 1: know generally that's you know, sleeping creature will will assume
Speaker 1: a certain position, you know, or you know, back to
Speaker 1: the cats, the same thing. Um. So we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: observe these things going on with fish and amphibians. So
Speaker 1: you know, the jury still is still out. So a
Speaker 1: jellyfish could be like the way deep Bottom and they
Speaker 1: might have successfully attached to tracking device, food or something,
Speaker 1: and there's a period of inactivity, you sort of have
Speaker 1: to assume that maybe they're in a resting state. Is
Speaker 1: that Yeah, that that's kind of how it goes. But
Speaker 1: again it's it's you know, it's like like you're saying earlier,
Speaker 1: we base a lot of it on the on the
Speaker 1: human mind, and we sort of, you know, we we
Speaker 1: use that as the model to try and understand everything.
Speaker 1: And you know, in some cases, like the jellyfish, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's we're so distantly related that maybe it doesn't hold up,
Speaker 1: you know, but right we're anthropomorphosizing everything. Now. One of
Speaker 1: the really cool um areas of sleep is uni hemispheric sleep,
Speaker 1: and you know, as in the hemispheres of the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is pretty good. It's kind of like, alright,
Speaker 1: imagine you have a you have a company with ninety employees,
Speaker 1: all right, and you're open nine to six, and then
Speaker 1: then you decide, all right, we need to actually be
Speaker 1: open all the time, you know. So so if you
Speaker 1: came up so then you're like, all right, well, we
Speaker 1: can't have all ninety employees work all the time because
Speaker 1: they'll quit and leave or you know, riot or whatever.
Speaker 1: So let's have like thirty work here, thirty work here.
Speaker 1: You know, you end up like mixing it up. And
Speaker 1: that's that's the pretty much what animals such as dolphins
Speaker 1: and uh and you know another you know, aquatic mamalstude
Speaker 1: because they're they're conscious breathers. So that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, if they were to go to sleep, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't breathe and then they would die. So they've got
Speaker 1: to be awake in some fashion all the time. So
Speaker 1: they just turn one hemisphere of the brain off. Is
Speaker 1: it because there is it a function of their biology
Speaker 1: or is it because they're worried about predators or both? Well,
Speaker 1: there's that too. Yeah, I mean you're the the ocean
Speaker 1: is an intensely dangerous place. You know, even if you're
Speaker 1: you know, a dolphin hanging out with other dolphins and
Speaker 1: you know they're you know, they're pretty rough and tumble characters,
Speaker 1: but but still you know, there's constantly something trying to
Speaker 1: eat you for the most part. So so yeah, that
Speaker 1: what they do. It's kind of kind of like if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen, uh, I understand, horses and some animals
Speaker 1: still like or even like you know, joggers, I don't know,
Speaker 1: will stand on one leg and rest the other and
Speaker 1: then switch to the other leg and then rest that one.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing except with the brain. So turn
Speaker 1: one side off, let it rest. They'll let the other
Speaker 1: side turn one side off and let it rest while
Speaker 1: the other one powers everything and then do the do
Speaker 1: the opposite. So you're never turning off both sides of
Speaker 1: the brain and letting both sides eat it once, but
Speaker 1: but one side of sleeping while the other remains awake.
Speaker 1: So that allows you to react really quickly, just being
Speaker 1: more efficient. Yeah, it's never a situation where um where
Speaker 1: oh I've got awake, because uh, this is this actually
Speaker 1: goes back to um to say, say you know, when
Speaker 1: when you're asleep and suddenly you're you have a dream
Speaker 1: where you're falling when you you know, fly awake. UM.
Speaker 1: There are some interesting studies, UM, mostly from psychologist Frederick
Speaker 1: Coolidge h And he's talked about this on Radio Lab
Speaker 1: before I believe UM. Like, he argues that the the
Speaker 1: idea of having a falling dream, UM, that comes from
Speaker 1: like like early hominid history where we were living in
Speaker 1: trees and when we were sleeping in the you know,
Speaker 1: so you know, you're sleeping in a tree. That's kind
Speaker 1: of you know, you're sleeping in a tree. So if
Speaker 1: you fall out of that tree, there's you know, probably
Speaker 1: all sorts of things just waiting, you know, for for
Speaker 1: a little you know, eight creatures to plummet from the branches.
Speaker 1: They can gobble them up. So if you feel like
Speaker 1: you're falling instant away, because you've got to protect yourself,
Speaker 1: you've got to grab back onto the tree and stay put.
Speaker 1: So so they think that's like an evolutionary remnant of
Speaker 1: those times. That's so cool for some reason, just reminding
Speaker 1: you of my college dreammate who was constantly falling her
Speaker 1: bunk bed, but like she fell completely off of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think again external forces acting on her. I think
Speaker 1: she would have totally been eaten by wolves in the
Speaker 1: old days. I know, I know her and Ozzy Osbourne, yeah,
Speaker 1: both of them. Um. And like, I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever get the the falling dreams per se, but I'm
Speaker 1: I'm always getting these dreams where I'm like drifting off
Speaker 1: to sleep a little bit, and then I'll dream that
Speaker 1: I'm slipping on something like on a linoleum floor and
Speaker 1: I'll be big and I'll just be like whoa, you know,
Speaker 1: So that's funny. My mind is a sidewalk, which you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm gonna see if I can lucid
Speaker 1: dream next time and put a banana peel there or
Speaker 1: something just to make a little bit more interesting. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try that out. Um. But then anyway, back
Speaker 1: to uh, back to the unihemistereric sleep. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's hard for us, you know again, this is
Speaker 1: us taking our you know, using our mind as the model.
Speaker 1: It's it's difficult for us to imagine what this would
Speaker 1: be like. But scientists think it might be some sort
Speaker 1: of like a semi conscious state. Uh, what kind of
Speaker 1: like we experienced when we're beginning to fall asleep. So
Speaker 1: it would not be it would not be the same
Speaker 1: as being awake. It would you would be operating everything
Speaker 1: at half mast, you know, or half power, but but
Speaker 1: you know, still awake enough to immediately respond to something.
Speaker 1: There's no like, oh I think I'm falling, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wake up. It would be like there's a predator, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cut you know. So from my cat owen, I
Speaker 1: have to say that I think I've actually observed this
Speaker 1: in him before, where he's looking at me. This is
Speaker 1: this is I think why cats get such a bad
Speaker 1: rap sometimes and are called creepy. But he'll sometimes look
Speaker 1: at me with one eye open and it'll be slightly
Speaker 1: rolled back. So I knew that he's in some sort
Speaker 1: of sleep state. So I have to wonder if it
Speaker 1: also extends to other animals. Well, Um, this is an
Speaker 1: interesting just in trying to figure out what euning hemispheric
Speaker 1: sleep might be like. Um, there's a book called Consider
Speaker 1: Fleebus by n And Banks. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: read anything by him. He's he's written a lot of
Speaker 1: like just straight up fiction, like The Wasps Factory, and
Speaker 1: he's a Scottish guy. He's also written a number of
Speaker 1: sci fi novels and consider fleeb This was the first
Speaker 1: book in the culture series, which is it's like a
Speaker 1: space opera kind of thing, but he throws in a
Speaker 1: lot of like really cool science and you know, in
Speaker 1: philosophy and stuff like it. It's it's nice, you know,
Speaker 1: brain fodder as far as sci fi goes. But in
Speaker 1: this book, there's a character named Craiglin who has quote
Speaker 1: enhanced hemispheric task division in his brain and uh and
Speaker 1: the way it works out is that one that so
Speaker 1: he's doing exactly what the dolphins do, but because he's
Speaker 1: a dangerous mercenary and has to be you know, be
Speaker 1: you know, on you know, alerted all times. So one
Speaker 1: third of the time, though one of you know, one
Speaker 1: half leaps and so he's a little bit dreamy and vague,
Speaker 1: and then another third of the time he's all logic
Speaker 1: and numbers and he can't communicate all that well with
Speaker 1: other people. And then for the other third at the time,
Speaker 1: he's completely awake. So so I found that really interesting,
Speaker 1: like because obviously Banks was trying to imagine how unihemispheric
Speaker 1: sleep would translate to the human experience the left and
Speaker 1: right brain right, so right, So one part of us
Speaker 1: would be really analytical and the other part would be yeah,
Speaker 1: composing arias perhaps I don't know, Yeah, it would be.
Speaker 1: It would be a weird life because you'd have to
Speaker 1: it seems like you probably have to want to line
Speaker 1: up and coordinate with your coworkers, with your spouse or
Speaker 1: significant other, with you know, how you have You have
Speaker 1: to really organize your life along which sleep pattern you were,
Speaker 1: you know, which part of your brain was functioning. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you'd have to actually color code yourself. I
Speaker 1: think everybody would, because it's not one be just you, right,
Speaker 1: it would be yeah, I'd be everybody one. So that
Speaker 1: would be interesting. A world where everyone has unihemispheric sleep,
Speaker 1: you'd have to be like like, oh, I can and
Speaker 1: asked Julie about this right now, because obviously she's all
Speaker 1: numbers and no speech, right, she's all green shirt today, Yeah,
Speaker 1: forget it or green flag or whatever. Yeah. See, I'm
Speaker 1: already trying to organize this. I'm really in training. But well,
Speaker 1: we've got uni hemospheric sleep. Um. We also have something
Speaker 1: called torpor, right, which is sort of a reduced version
Speaker 1: of hibernation, and I think we should probably just mention
Speaker 1: that because yeah, because people might be thinking, hey, how
Speaker 1: about bears aren't sleeping for months? Not really right, right,
Speaker 1: because they're they're taking their their bodies down to the
Speaker 1: studs so to speak. I mean they're just shutting everything down. Um,
Speaker 1: so there's not much brain activity there. But torpor is
Speaker 1: sort of not as extreme version of hibernation, and that's
Speaker 1: found in hummingbirds. Um. Yeah, yeah, we were talking about
Speaker 1: this earlier and I believe it's uh yeah, they mentioned this.
Speaker 1: I think in Aton Borrows the life of birds at
Speaker 1: one point where humming we're talking about how much energy
Speaker 1: it takes to fly, and hummingbirds are the extreme of this.
Speaker 1: They just consume a colossal amount of energy. Yeah, their
Speaker 1: heart it doesn't beats per minute or secondary. They're just
Speaker 1: they're completely inefficient. And so when they go to sleep,
Speaker 1: they actually seriously like knock themselves out pretty much. Um.
Speaker 1: They hang upside down like a bat, and they they
Speaker 1: sleep overnight. And this is actually called corporate because it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily what we think of as sleep sleep. It's
Speaker 1: just it's a letter version again of hibernation. And they
Speaker 1: really but they need that time periods. Like you said,
Speaker 1: they're not very efficient conserving their energy. So you could
Speaker 1: go up to a hummingbird and just kind of tap
Speaker 1: it and you might think it's dead and actually won't
Speaker 1: even rant um. But that's how it's getting at seas.
Speaker 1: And it's just kind of another interesting way to think
Speaker 1: about sleep because I know at some point this is
Speaker 1: sort of semantics. You know, we think about sleep, sleep, hibernation, torpor,
Speaker 1: but it's all about just shutting it down. And there's
Speaker 1: a reason why we do that, because you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've got to get the benefits of sleep. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the payoff? What is what's Owen or in my case,
Speaker 1: Biscuit doing all this time when they're well, I think
Speaker 1: with with Biscuit and Owen, they're they're definitely um again
Speaker 1: because they're not out in the wild there, maybe not
Speaker 1: recharging as much as a human would um, but they're
Speaker 1: definitely working through the data and they're processing and who
Speaker 1: knows what. We don't know what they're dreaming about, but
Speaker 1: like you said, they're they're really their skills are still intact.
Speaker 1: You've gotta wonder if maybe they're still putting themselves through
Speaker 1: the paces she said, I think it was like like
Speaker 1: carrot cat terrorist attack training count. Yeah. Um, so they
Speaker 1: may just be putting themselves through their exercises and jumping
Speaker 1: through hoops and what not they do in dreams. But um. So,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we know about sleep is
Speaker 1: that it helps us to repair all the muscles and
Speaker 1: the tissues. Um. And it also helps us to review
Speaker 1: the data that we've taken in, and it makes us
Speaker 1: more adaptive to the environment around us, because every day
Speaker 1: you there's something new that you're taking in. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could be you're driving to work and you see
Speaker 1: some light, you know, dabbling a leaf, um, but you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily really gonna dwell on that, so your brain
Speaker 1: just kind of goes to MEUNI files it away, and
Speaker 1: that might be something that it recalls later just as
Speaker 1: part of a vast amount of data it has to
Speaker 1: sort through. So I was thinking about this and I thought,
Speaker 1: what is the most extreme version of the benefits like
Speaker 1: who that we know that we can study, and that
Speaker 1: would certainly be human infants because as we have mentioned,
Speaker 1: they sleep up to sixteen hours a day and about
Speaker 1: fifty percent of that time they're dreaming. So I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's an organism that is working really really hard
Speaker 1: at developing neural pathways and um, doing all sorts of
Speaker 1: crazy things to try to get its body bigger faster.
Speaker 1: It's mine bigger and faster. I mean the human mind
Speaker 1: actually develops them in the first two years it's mass
Speaker 1: so um, they're doing a lot of work there. So
Speaker 1: I thought that was that's kind of a cool thing
Speaker 1: to look at because if you compare it humans, human
Speaker 1: adults are actually spending about of their time dreaming. So
Speaker 1: think about the human infant. It's building up its own new,
Speaker 1: fresh database. And you you take that sort of model
Speaker 1: and you start to apply it to other forms. So
Speaker 1: if you look at um, like there's a study that M. I. T.
Speaker 1: Did with rats basically saying they were performing these repetitive
Speaker 1: tasks and then they were sleeping and they were performing
Speaker 1: them again and they were doing exceedingly well. And so
Speaker 1: we know this in humans too, that you learned something,
Speaker 1: you sleep and all of a sudden you're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you're like canarieves and um, you're in the matrix. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you know you're not that good, but but still
Speaker 1: it's kind of late when people say like, oh, I
Speaker 1: need to sleep on this. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I
Speaker 1: think was it um Roosevelt who just wouldn't make any
Speaker 1: major decision without taking a nap, which I thought was,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty great. Yeah. I think that he always
Speaker 1: carried like a cot with him and it would be
Speaker 1: in the middle of like you know, international conference and
Speaker 1: they have someone asked him a question and be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they plot the cot eight hours
Speaker 1: later to have an answer. See, I kind of want
Speaker 1: to do this at work. I don't know how well
Speaker 1: it would go down, but you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think it's worth a shot. Yeah. Um, you can try
Speaker 1: to introduce that. And then you think about Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: who who claims that Yesterday was written in a dream
Speaker 1: and he woke up and just ran the piano and
Speaker 1: got it down as quickly as he could. So if
Speaker 1: you think about the benefits of sleep, and particularly for humans,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a great place to repair your
Speaker 1: body and also work through all the anxieties, fears and
Speaker 1: hopes that you have in this sort of safe place.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like a blackboard of the mind. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you apply that again, if you look at
Speaker 1: the at the rats, you can see that the same
Speaker 1: thing is happening in other species. That rats too are
Speaker 1: taking data and running through it, and cats are and
Speaker 1: they're coming out much better on the other end. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like just as our computers are running
Speaker 1: their defrag programs at like three in the morning or
Speaker 1: scanning for viruses, it's kind of the dream or dream cycle,
Speaker 1: and our sleeper is achieving the same thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I was looking a lot of this data that
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, um, how much of this is
Speaker 1: so similar to a computer, which makes sense because humans
Speaker 1: if created computers, and it's sort of based on the
Speaker 1: way that we say that, like maybe we didn't create well,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got some you've got some other theories
Speaker 1: blown around there. Yeah, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the space one. But I'm not going to mention aliens.
Speaker 1: I'm not. Um, But then you also have I think
Speaker 1: it's important to also mentioned that not all creatures dream.
Speaker 1: To reptiles, we don't think that they dream. I should
Speaker 1: say that because yeah, I mean, come on, they've got
Speaker 1: you know, primorial go in there. I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: but they actually they're not exhibiting any sort of ways
Speaker 1: that we can we recognize the streaming. So it may
Speaker 1: just be that we're limited in what we can sense
Speaker 1: in them, but I just think it's important for that
Speaker 1: out there. Um. So we can really only theorize out
Speaker 1: the benefits of animals. Obviously, obviously we can't go up
Speaker 1: to them and say, hey, draft what, how is this
Speaker 1: benefiting you? Um? But I think the difference between humans
Speaker 1: and animals is that for animals, it's more about external forces. Um,
Speaker 1: the they're reacting to their external forces. They're behaving that
Speaker 1: in different ways. Um. Because of that. You know, we
Speaker 1: sleep during the day, or excuse me, at night because
Speaker 1: we work during the day. They don't have this sort
Speaker 1: of pressures or concerns, and so they may be sleeping
Speaker 1: when there's a predator around. So, um, we know that
Speaker 1: they're benefiting from it because they they're not gonna get eaten,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna you know, scroll themselves away, so to speak. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's a benefit to them, and it's and it's
Speaker 1: something that we can theorize about. But again we can't.
Speaker 1: We don't have any definitive answers on right now. We
Speaker 1: can definitely deprive them of their sleep and see what happens.
Speaker 1: And there's been a number of interesting slash scary studies,
Speaker 1: um creepy studies about that. For instance, there was like
Speaker 1: there's a Princeton University study in which they deprived number
Speaker 1: of animals will sleep and they found it like seventy
Speaker 1: two hours without sleep results in elevated stress hormone levels
Speaker 1: and the animals end up producing significantly fewer brain cells,
Speaker 1: which again flows right back into what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: the processing of all the stimuli, the recharging you know,
Speaker 1: of the of the you know, the the fleshy computer,
Speaker 1: um and the computer. And they also found that like specifically,
Speaker 1: like you know, we're talking about rats earlier, um, like
Speaker 1: two weeks without sleep kill a rat dead um, And
Speaker 1: same same thing with other rodents and uh and even
Speaker 1: um even flies like you know, like I said, we're
Speaker 1: not sure about all insects, but if like apparently there's
Speaker 1: a they've tried to deprive flies of sleep and found
Speaker 1: it flyestyve so, which makes sense. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've pulled all nighter before. We all have
Speaker 1: awful and if for some reason you did that two
Speaker 1: days in a row, then your your cognitent functions are
Speaker 1: like in a breakdown a lot, I mean you're an
Speaker 1: after wear your your green shirt or whatever, like half
Speaker 1: my brain is out. Yeah, and um, it's interesting. I've
Speaker 1: also read that like there's like a specific gene that
Speaker 1: like some people have, like you know that there there's
Speaker 1: some people people that are like, if I don't get
Speaker 1: my six to eight hours of sleep, I just can't
Speaker 1: function and uh, and then other people seem to be
Speaker 1: able to pull the all nighters with a little more finesse.
Speaker 1: And there's there's like a genetic marker for that, uh
Speaker 1: that they'veified. Yeah. I don't have the name of it offhand,
Speaker 1: but we I think we mentioned in the previous podcast.
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily that they're lacking what what is
Speaker 1: the gosh can't it's not coming to me right now,
Speaker 1: But there's just certain I think hormone that um that
Speaker 1: we have that helps melatonin, that regulates that. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that they have a little or a lot in melatonin.
Speaker 1: It's just that they've adapted somehow which are different you know,
Speaker 1: just a different evolutionary you know adaptation. So it's one
Speaker 1: of the things where if like you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of space predator came down and started eating everybody that
Speaker 1: couldn't pull all nighters. Then we'd all we'd only have
Speaker 1: that one variation of humans left. So I think it's
Speaker 1: good to know that. And I say that because I
Speaker 1: think I read somewhere that Oprah only sleeps like six
Speaker 1: hours a night, and I was like, wow, another way
Speaker 1: in whichever is making me feel like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing all that I should be. Yeah, I love you.
Speaker 1: So the fruitfuly thing, it really kind of cracks me
Speaker 1: up because I think, how exactly did they deprive them
Speaker 1: of sleep? Yeah? I picture them just sort of poking
Speaker 1: them in the shoulder like a little stick. Okay, I
Speaker 1: was I was just thinking about these tiny little cigarettes
Speaker 1: they might have fashioned, and some little cups of coffee
Speaker 1: just keep them caffeinated and up. Yeah. Well that's that's
Speaker 1: the Terrans. When they talk about the sleep these animals
Speaker 1: like just being super stressed from not sleeping. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like I would be really stressed too if like
Speaker 1: somebody was making like preventing me from sleep, right you
Speaker 1: know that? Would you know, what's this guy doing in
Speaker 1: my room poking me with a stick all night, you know,
Speaker 1: right enough with the tiny cigarette. That makes me think
Speaker 1: of this too, is that I've heard that when you're
Speaker 1: when you're really stressed out during the day, that that
Speaker 1: does mess up your cortisol levels, which tend to peek
Speaker 1: during the nighttime hours, which usually your circadian rhythms would be,
Speaker 1: you know, stomping on that making sure that you you know,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be happening. So I'm just sort of fascinated
Speaker 1: with that because I wonder if the same thing happens
Speaker 1: in animals and their cortisol levels also go up, or
Speaker 1: if that's just a particularly human thing. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like humans don't get enough sleep, you know that they
Speaker 1: say at least, you know, a a degradation of the memory.
Speaker 1: You can't you know, hold as many facts, your alertness,
Speaker 1: level of coordination, judgment, everything kind of tumbles downhill. So
Speaker 1: supposedly like Keith Richards stayed awake for like a week
Speaker 1: once or something, so um, I never put him in
Speaker 1: the same column with Navy seals, but now I am.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, It's like I imagined in the whole team
Speaker 1: of them, a whole team of Keith Richard's est Navy
Speaker 1: seals sort of like stumbling into a secret hideout and
Speaker 1: mumbling about well should haven't? Okay? That was that was
Speaker 1: not good? Sorry about that? Well? So there you have it. Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty much animal sleep. So to all animals sleep,
Speaker 1: A large number of them do. There's some we're not
Speaker 1: sure about. But sleep does different things depending on what
Speaker 1: your species happens to be. Yeah. Yeah, and we still
Speaker 1: don't know what our cats are dreaming about. Um, we
Speaker 1: want to know. We want to hear from you. Do
Speaker 1: you what are your cats dreaming about something? Are they
Speaker 1: trying to plant thoughts and your subconscious Yes, let us
Speaker 1: know pretty much any thoughts you have about your cat's
Speaker 1: brain activity, we would be happy to hear it. So Hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about sleep and dreams,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com website. We have articles like do all Creatures Sleep?
Speaker 1: By Jessica Toothman. We got a couple of articles from
Speaker 1: Charles Bryant, Sleep Important, Why do we sleep? And uh?
Speaker 1: We even have how sleep works by Marshall Brain himself.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening for more on this and thousands of
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