#birdssleeping

Just a gosling (not Ryan) sleeping in the afternoon sunlight. Nothing to see here. Move along. - #notimportant #birdssleeping #dumbhashtags #hashtagblessed #birdsarentreal #hashtagswag #gosling #notryangosling #birdhashtagsfordays #birdsaredinosaurs #lazybird (at Vermont) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfHJiNuub7q/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

"To help them stay aloft for days, weeks, or even months at a time, scientists have assumed that these long distance fliers have evolved the ability to sleep during flight by engaging in unihemispheric sleep, that is, leaving one brain hemisphere active while the other gets some rest. A [..] The birds remained awake during the day, but as the sun set, and as they went into soaring mode (as opposed to active foraging mode), they went into SWS for durations lasting up to several minutes. [..] Interestingly, and quite unexpectedly, the SWS sometimes occurred in one hemisphere at a time, or in both hemispheres simultaneously. The researchers concluded that birds don’t need unihemispheric sleep for aerodynamic control. That said, unihemispheric sleep occurred quite often, and it happened while the birds were circling, rising up on air currents. This suggests that the birds were literally keeping one eye open, watching where they were going, likely hoping to avoid a collision with other birds. Occasionally, the birds also entered into REM sleep. That might seem like an extremely risky thing to do while flying, but it’s important to realize that REM sleep in birds isn’t like it is in mammals. Unlike us, where bursts of REM sleep are lengthy and involve complete loss of muscle tone, REM sleep in birds lasts for only a few seconds. That said, the resulting loss of muscle tone caused the heads of the birds to dip during flight, but their flight patterns weren’t affected. [..] On average, these birds slept for only 42 minutes per day. By contrast, these same birds will sleep for about 12 hours a day when on land. This suggests that frigatebirds are seriously sleep deprived during their foraging flights."