Think eight hour a nighttime is a adequate amount ofsleep ? secure believe that ’s nothing compared to some other animals – but which is the sleepiest of them all ?
Koalas
The ultimate champions in conking out are most likely the koalas – these Australian icons can catch some Z’s for a whopping18 to 22 hoursper day ( living the dreaming for genuine ) . The reason why they spend so much of the daylight log Z’s roll around their dieting .
Koalas eataround 500 grams(17.6 apothecaries' ounce ) of foliage per sidereal day – in the main eucalyptus tree – which might sound like a sinewy salad , but it does n’t provide much in the way of energy . In fact , the leave of absence that they exhaust on average only represent about 5 per centum sugars and starches . Even if you run through a lot , it ’s not going to be enough to keep you up and running all Clarence Day .
Then there ’s the fact that eucalyptus impart aretoxic – if human ingest as much eucalyptus as koala bear do , we ’d promptly be pop off by it . Koalas , on the other hand , have a digestive system that ’s up to of dealing with the toxins in eucalyptus tree ; a retentive , coiled - up part of this organisation called the caecum contains specialized bacterium creditworthy for this .
The downside to this digestive process is that it want a lot of energy . Add that to a low - vim dieting , and sleep for the immense bulk of the day countenance koala bear to husband as much get-up-and-go as possible .
When koalas do emerge from their sleep and move about , it ’s usually at night . However , their extendednapping seshmight also be interrupted during the daytime if something disturbs them ( rude ) , or they get too hot or inhuman , prompting them to waken up and move elsewhere .
Fire ant workers
prole ant of thefire antspeciesSolenopsis invictaonly catch some Z’s for around 4 minute and 48 minutes per day – but hear us out . They might not be on the story of koalas , but these ants still have a very enviable snooze - related skill : major power napping , and to a particularly telling degree .
A2009 studyexamining the sleep / wake cycles ofS. invictafound that the worker ants averaged a gigantic 253 sleep sequence per day , each hold out just over a minute . That kind of sleeping pattern sound positively fiendish to a human , but in an ant settlement , brusk and piercing Napoleon seem to serve an important purpose .
" The large number and short short sleep by workers means that jobs in the nest never go unattended , " work co - source Deby Cassill toldBBC Earth Newsat the time . " There is always a proletarian usable when the need arises . When work is obtuse , workers sleep more . "
The poove , on the other hand , were found to slumber for around 6 second at a time on average , totaling about 9 hours of rest per day . Perks of being the Danaus plexippus , we guess .
