2023-12-01 12:51:09
Penguins have to be careful: When they breed, hungry skuas always hover over the colonies to grab eggs or chicks. If one parent is out fishing, the bird remaining at the nest has to be on guard, keeping watch for hours without a break. But how is that supposed to work?
It doesn’t have to work, researchers report in Science. They measured the brain activity of chinstrap penguins on King George Island off the West Antarctic Peninsula over a period of days and discovered that the breeding penguins do sleep. Even a lot, namely up to eleven hours a day.
However, “sleeping” is a very friendly definition of the way penguins recover: they fall into microsleep more than 10,000 times a day, on average this nap lasts just four seconds and usually only affects one hemisphere of the brain. After all, the birds do not seem to be affected by problems falling asleep.
Pia Heinemann Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 22 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 6 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 7
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