r/interestingasfuck • u/DearEmphasis4488 • 1d ago

Animals sleep time

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u/baelrog 1d ago

Why do large herbivores sleep so little?

Sleep also doesn’t seem to be correlated with intelligence as Elephants are very intelligent creatures but has very different need for sleep with other intelligent creatures on the list.

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u/Myrsky4 1d ago

I am no expert but have several ideas - carnivores have an easier time resting as they can gorge and then go into little food comas while digesting and not starve. If your main source of calories is plants you have a lot more eating you need to do, it's also for those same reasons that it's basically impossible to gorge in the wild for an herbivore.

In addition some animals make it so they rest parts of their brain at a time(famously sharks and marine mammals do this) - elephants may have similar mechanisms so they can be alert more

Those are my thoughts but again, not an expert

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u/Maultaschtyrann 1d ago

Good explanation! Big herbivores need to be feeding constantly. The carnivores actually are the other way around. They need to sleep through as much of the suboptimal times to hunt to conserve energy for when they hunt.