Evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight

Niels C Rattenborg (), Bryson Voirin, Sebastian M. Cruz, Ryan Tisdale, Giacomo Dell’Omo, Hans-Peter Lipp, Martin Wikelski and Alexei L. Vyssotski ()
Additional contact information
Niels C Rattenborg: Avian Sleep Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Bryson Voirin: Avian Sleep Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Sebastian M. Cruz: Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Ryan Tisdale: Avian Sleep Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Giacomo Dell’Omo: Ornis italica
Hans-Peter Lipp: Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich
Martin Wikelski: Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
Alexei L. Vyssotski: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Many birds fly non-stop for days or longer, but do they sleep in flight and if so, how? It is commonly assumed that flying birds maintain environmental awareness and aerodynamic control by sleeping with only one eye closed and one cerebral hemisphere at a time. However, sleep has never been demonstrated in flying birds. Here, using electroencephalogram recordings of great frigatebirds (Fregata minor) flying over the ocean for up to 10 days, we show that they can sleep with either one hemisphere at a time or both hemispheres simultaneously. Also unexpectedly, frigatebirds sleep for only 0.69 h d−1 (7.4% of the time spent sleeping on land), indicating that ecological demands for attention usually exceed the attention afforded by sleeping unihemispherically. In addition to establishing that birds can sleep in flight, our results challenge the view that they sustain prolonged flights by obtaining normal amounts of sleep on the wing.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12468 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12468

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12468

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().