Reindeer can sleep and eat at the same time – study
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In summer, reindeer can sleep and eat at the same time. So they accumulate fat reserves for the winter.
According to a study published in Current Biology, deer can enjoy eating food even while sleeping. The combination of resting and chewing also allows animals to get psychological benefits from sleeping, writes Smithsonian Magazine.
“The traditional view of sleep is that when you sleep, you don’t eat. However, there are different types of sleep, not just human sleep. Deer found a way to combine these two processes“, says Vladyslav Vyazovsky, a sleep physiologist from the University of Oxford.
Deer and other ruminants feed on cellulose plants. They quickly swallow food and then move it in the stomach. This process helps digestion and assimilation of all nutrients contained in food.
| Photo: sdchulov/Depositphoto |
To test whether reindeer actually sleep while chewing, neuroscientists from the University of Zurich performed non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) on four adult female Eurasian tundra reindeer in captivity in Norway.
Scientists observed the animals for four consecutive days on the days of the summer and winter solstices, as well as on the day of the autumnal equinox.
They found that deer sleep the same amount of time during the 24-hour daylight in summer, when food is plentiful, and during dark winter days, when food is scarce.
“This means that their need for sleep is regulated by something that comes from within, not from without“, explains Melanie Furrer, a neuroscientist from the University of Zurich.
Research shows that the more time deer spend chewing, the more they rest. Scientists have also found that when deer chew, their brain waves resemble those seen during sleep.
The research team was interested in whether deer actually benefit from sleeping while chewing. To investigate this, they kept the deer awake for two hours. Then the animals’ electroencephalogram showed an increase in slow wave activity: this meant that the animals were tired and sought more sleep to compensate for this deprivation.
The research team then tested whether chewing made the animals want to sleep as well as sleep restriction. But their brain activity showed that after chewing the deer felt the same recovery as after sleeping.
The reindeer’s amazing ability to eat and sleep at the same time appears to be an adaptation to life in the short Arctic summer. It allows animals not to interrupt the accumulation of fat reserves for the winter in order to sleep.
This relaxation technique is one of the ways animals adapt to extreme polar conditions. Although reindeer sleep evenly throughout the year, their activity levels vary, with the animals appearing more active in the summer than in the winter, scientists say.
Read also: In England, a lonely deer was found a mate before Christmas: the happy story of “Santa’s helpers”
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