"Incanus" <Thomas.zeis at stud.unibas.ch> writes:
> Somebody knows the average sleeping time different animals need (Mice, rats,
> elephants, dolphins, birds, insects, etc.) ?? If possible let me know their
> complexity of the brain ?? Are there some coherences between complexity and
> sleeping time ???
>> thx for your answers
I'm not sure how much each species *needs* to sleep, but if you look
at how much they *do* sleep, it doesn't follow any simple rule. The
champion sleepers are bats and armadillos, both at over 18 hrs/day.
At the other end of the scale are horses, at less than 3 hrs/day.
Humans and rabbits are very similar, at about 8 hrs/day. Many
intro-neuroscience textbooks discuss this question -- in particular,
Kalat's "Biological Psychology", which I use for teaching, has a
summary of the data in figure 9.9 (6th edition).
-- Bill
