Scientists have calculated the cheerful mammal

Among mammals the least sleep of African elephants. This was stated by the biologists from the School of anatomical Sciences of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

A study published in the journal PLOS ONE, and briefly about it reports Reuters.

According to the study, on average the largest land animals sleep for two hours a day in the period of time between 2 and 6 am. The maximum sleep duration in vivo is five hours. About elephants is carried out in the supine position only about 17% of the time on vacation.

Sometimes after a long day exploring or escaping from poachers or lions, elephants do not sleep for 46 hours. During this time they manage to go about 30 miles.

To such conclusions scientists came after a 35-day observation of mammals in Chobe national Park (Botswana). It is noted that activity data animal have using implantable under the skin of the devices equipped with a gyroscope and a system of satellite tracking. Sensors, as the biologists were safe for animals.

In this work the authors contradicts the hypothesis that for the preservation of memories needed REM sleep, accompanied by rapid movements of the eyeballs. The elephants, other than a good memory, these processes are rare — about once in three or four nights.

As shown by previous studies in captive African elephants sleep between four and six hours a day. In addition to elephants among mammals sleep a little homemade horse (three hours). Most of the day resting little brown bat (19 hours), opossum (18 hours) and Armadillo (17 hours).

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