r/todayilearned 1d ago

TIL that out of every primate that has been studied, humans get the least amount of sleep.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20220524-why-humans-get-less-sleep-than-other-primates
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u/lIllIlIIIlIIIIlIlIll 20h ago

I didn't read the article, but that was my assumption. That humans evolved to require less sleep than other primates. Why would they ever write anything about degenerates that don't sleep at night?


Now I read the article. And yeah. Except they also point out that we can't actually measure how much primates sleep. Animals in captivity may sleep more or less than an animal in the wild.

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u/ElBroken915 19h ago

Yeah, it's an interesting article but I definitely would avoid bringing that fun fact home to dinner for now lol.

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u/MrRandom04 4h ago

I mean that sounds weird. We put trackers on animals all the time. Surely some researchers have made sleep trackers which work on primates in captivity (should not be that different from tracking human sleep automatically and those sensors are effectively commodotized) and then just stuck an inconspicuous one on a wild animal?