Penguin Parents Take 4-Second Naps

Parents with young babies know how hard it is to get quality sleep, but at least humans don't have to guard against predators swooping in to eat your baby at any time. That's the case with penguins, who must stay alert to protect incubating eggs and young chicks. It's a full-time job, so penguin mothers and fathers switch out incubation time and time spent hunting for food. But how do they get any sleep?

A study of 14 chinstrap penguins in the South Shetland Islands saw the birds outfitted with EEG sensors, GPS trackers, and pressure sensors. The results give a picture of how much time penguins of a mating pair spent incubating eggs, hunting, and resting. They found that while incubating or watching chicks, these penguins slept in increments of a few seconds at a time. The average "nap" was only four seconds long!

Both incubating and non-incubating penguins had about 600 naps an hour, or up to 10,000 a day. Some naps involved both brain hemispheres, while others were for one hemisphere only, which is how some migrating birds sleep while flying. Read more about this research at ABC. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Jorge Alarcon or Dr. Daniel Benetti)