These animal takes four second naps, thousands of times each day

Originally published at: These animal takes four second naps, thousands of times each day | Boing Boing

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I’m napping right now.

Ok finished.

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Dude, you were out for so long! I was worried there might be something wrong with you. You were out for a good 5 seconds! :penguin:

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I wonder if the penguins get a permanent 15% penalty to consciousness; the way pawns with a circadian half-cycler do?

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Sure - try and sleep with electrodes implanted in your brain.

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Seriously you guys, this is how I nap, too. Little tiny micro-naps. I had no idea I was a penguin.

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Great audio story of this research on NPR.

It was great to hear the research was all done in the wild - with smaller and smaller computers - nature based data gathering is making amazing strides.

NPR: These penguins take 10,000 little naps a day — seconds at a time

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You may want to check if you are brooding any eggs, live on an all raw fish diet, like living half the year in total darkness surrounded by 100’s of your identical clan mates …

If yes? … then yes your are most definitely a penguin!

Side question… what do you know about your rogue cousin who settled in London and started a publishing house? … Amazingly talented and I just love those little images of him on my library book shelf.

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So there’s a parallel here in a small subset of ultrarunning, in “last person standing” events. In these races, participants must run a 4.16 mile loop, over and over and over again. Each loop has to be completed within one hour, and you must be ready to go for the next loop at the start of the hour. This continues until no one is left able to complete the distance within the 60 minutes.

In practice, this means runners usually running the loop in about fifty minutes, give or take. That gives them a few minutes to eat, fix any problems, and to rest. In a lot of cases, folks will begin squeezing in very short (~5 minute) power nap. You have to be back at the start line at the top of the hour - you can’t oversleep!

And the record for doing this is four and a half days. Four and a half days, subsisting on no sleep more than a couple of minutes at a time. While running 450 miles.

Which - is not exactly the same as what the chinstraps are doing, but human beings can survive for a lot longer than you might expect with only very short periods of sleep. If we can learn from the penguins we might never have to stop!

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Jinx Thats Me GIF by League of Legends

… clearly I have not kept up with all the latest developments in the world of chess :thinking:

Such binary little beasts.
0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101

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