How Sleep Plays a Role in Regulating Body Temperature and Metabolic Rates in Primates

According to the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School (2007), if one does not receive an adequate amount of sleep one may become sleep deprived, one’s health may decline, the immune system may be compromised, and the ability to learn or complete tasks may become impaired. The question evoked from this necessity is, why do we sleep? Psychologists typically take two stances concerning this controversy: an adaptive stance or a restorative stance. While psychologists are still not certain on the answer, both the restorative and adaptive approaches have strong evidence of truth and actuality. Supporters of the adaptive theory of sleep believe that sleep is a result of evolution (Ciccarelli, 2015, p. 141).

In a laboratory study of sleep deprivation, researchers employed a variety of techniques to keep

Isbell and Wright’s articles both focus on monkey species and their native environments, Africa for Isbell’s (1994) vervet Old World monkey and South America, Peru area, for Wright’s (1994) owl and titis monkeys. The articles main focus is the relationship between these monkeys and their natural predators. Focusing on how the predator aspect of their lives is determined by their environment and adaptations they make to ensure survival. Isbell’s Vervets Year of Doom focuses more on the adaptations that was forced upon the vervets’ because of their changing environment, the death of fever trees. While Wright’s Night Watch on the Amazon focusses more on how the primates way of life affects their relationship with predators and the likelihood of attacks. Both articles have similar aspects however the species way of life, specifically their environment and sleep schedule, are quite different as well as the authors way of observing and studying the primates within their habitats.

In this lab, we are going to try to answer the question, Does body size affect endotherms metabolic rates? This question is very controversial among scientists. They’ve only agreed on one thing, there are different scalings between animals, but they don 't know how that affects metabolism and why (Hoppler and Weibel 2005). Some scientist’s studies show that body size in endotherms does affect metabolism rate due to SA/V ratios. The ratios affect the endotherms metabolism based on how high or low the SA/V ratio is. An animal with a larger SA/V ratio puts off more heat to their environment. This results in smaller animals having to burn through their food more to maintain their body temperature (“Unit 4 Demos More on Metabolic Rate”). What led us to the formation of our experiment was the experiment performed in the article Smith et al. (2015). In

I chose to write my paper on the differences between diurnal and nocturnal primates. I chose this topic because I thought it sounded interesting. I also chose it because I have horrible night vision and have trouble driving at night, so I thought it would be cool to learn how certain primates live in darkness and how their eyes work. This topic is relevant to biological anthropology because we learned about all different types of primates throughout the course and their characteristics including: social behaviors, diets, nocturnal vs. diurnal, and many other aspects of primate life. We didn’t get to go into detail about many of the primates and see the differences in nocturnal versus diurnal. In my paper I decided to key in on two specific animals, the owl money and brown lemur. I did this because I wanted to get to know more about each animal and the owl monkey has a very unique story. I also chose to narrow in on the main difference between all diurnal and nocturnal animals and that is the eyes. In my paper I will talk about the behavioral differences between the owl monkey and brown lemur (I will also go into some detail about each of the primates, because I thought they both were fascinating), the differences in the eyes, and also just some other general facts about diurnal and nocturnal primates.

“Non-human primates, due to their level of intelligence when compared to other animals, and also due to their evolutionary closeness to man are maintained in several types of captive facilities like laboratories, zoological parks, animal circuses and conservation breeding centres” (Mallapur 2005). Non-human primates are the closes species to human-kind compared to others. The intelligence they contain and their relatively comparable behaviors they have with human-kind make them a fascinating study. They are kept for observation and research; but many of the enclosure sceneries evoke abnormal behavior patterns among non-human primates. Maintaining a satisfied non-human primate in captivity can be challenging.

This was a very interesting assignment; I have learned some important things on this topic. The topics are on circadian rhythms disorders and sleep deprivation. To start out on circadian rhythms disorders this is what I have learned. Circadian rhythms are regulated by a part of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. One’s alertness, core body temperature, moods, learning efficiency, blood pressure, metabolism, and pulse rate all follow these circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms lead to sleep deprivation. Circadian rhythms affect one’s body not allowing one to get the correct sleep and time of sleep one is need to function properly.

Oswald’s study on the restoration theory of sleep attempts to explain why animals sleep. Oswald suggests that sleep is the time when the body removes waste, replenishes its levels of neurotransmitters in preparation for the next day and carries out repairs to damaged cells and growth could occur. In regards to Oswald NREM is a time for replenishing the body , especially stages 3 and 4 which occur at the start of the night when the body is the most tired. During stages 3 and 4 we secrete greater levels of growth hormone in the blood which helps in the repair process, seeming to offer support to his theory.

My hypothesis was that, “If the Ring Tailed Lemur spends a third of their time on the ground foraging for food, then if we study them for an hour in captivity, they should spend approximately the same amount of time foraging for food.” This hypothesis was proven correct by the data of the Ring Tailed Lemurs at the Bronx Zoo. The lemurs at the zoo spent around one third of the time on the ground. The amount of time that the lemurs spent on the ground was 33% of the time that the lemurs were on the ground. In the Bronx Zoo the lemurs spent thirteen thirty sixths of their time which is 36% of their time on the ground. Even in captivity the Ring Tailed Lemurs spent most of the time in the trees and less time on the ground foraging for food.

The relative amount of REM sleep in other mammals exhibits in connection with their level of development at birth also supports the idea that REM sleep must aid in development. (1) Typically, animals born relatively mature, such as dolphins, giraffes, and guinea pigs, demonstrate low-amounts of REM sleep, while animals born relatively immature, such as ferrets, armadillos, and platypuses, exhibit higher levels of REM sleep. (3) Humans fall in between the spectrum of amounts of REM sleep with platypuses having the most REM sleep and some species of dolphin and whale exhibiting none. (3)

This essay focuses on evaluating three functions of sleep. These functions include mental health (Jackowska et al, 2011), cardiovascular disease (Kronholm et al, 2011) and memory (Hu et al, 2006). The key aspects are explained in detail with regards to studies. The findings from the studies will help justify the function and it’s involvement with sleep. Sleep is important for an individual’s well being, survival, brain development, emotional regulation, cognitive function, memory, and in order to protect mental and cardiovascular health. An individual should sleep for 6-8 hours. A recent suggestion by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommended that an individual should sleep for minimum 7 hours. The quality of sleep is significant to maintain healthy brain functions. Evidence, indicating that good sleep quality is essential for mood and health then duration (Chandola et al, 2010). The researches implied will enable the understanding of the functions of sleep and evaluate the evidence of each of the functions, including advantages and limitations. Furthermore ethical issues are discussed, and an overall summary of the essay is briefed.

In the scientific article “Wild Elephants Sleep Just Two Hours a Night” Ed Yong, explains how researchers theorize using evidence on “why animals snooze at all.” Through his writing, Yong gives the reader insight on the complexity of researching sleeping animals, with a focus on wild elephants in Africa as the case study. The objective of the article is to persuade and educate, by using credible academic examples, anticipating tone, and a reasonable message, the author’s statement can successfully be passed onto the intended audience.

Sleep duration and quality participate in normal metabolism, function of immune system, mood, and cognitive functioning [1]. Short duration of sleep and circadian misalignment are hypothesized to contribute to many problems of health including over weight, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiac disease, mood disorders, cognitive dysfunction, and

Organisms, whether they happen to be nocturnal or diurnal always have a sort of involuntary or in the words or Ivan Pavlov, ‘unconditioned reflex responses’ that they use to determine when to sleep and wake. Biologists universally believe that organisms have a type of biological clock controlling their various cycles for daily activities. According to the American Heritage’s Dictionary of Student Science, 2014, the daily biological activities are referred to as circadian rhythms and are influenced by light and dark 24-hour day regular intervals. The rhythms are controlled by hormones and regulated by the brain, but can be disrupted by the alteration of daily schedules like exposure to light during night time hours. (American Heritage, 2014). Different organisms have different ways of handling their sleep-wake cycles as we will see in the analysis of cycles that are characteristic of the giraffe, the camel, and the desert snail. This paper will analyze sleep patterns of each organism, how different their sleep cycle is from that of the human cycle, whether they are nocturnal or diurnal, and whether any of them dreams.

Sleep is undoubtedly one of the most essential requirements for the human body to function properly. It plays a very important role in ensuring the wellness of the human body both physically as well as mentally. In fact, the importance of sleep is clear from the fact that it helps you in maintaining a good lifestyle throughout our entire lifetime. Not only does it help maintain our physical and mental health; rather it also helps in maintaining a decent and healthy lifestyle along with ensuring safety from a number of fatal diseases. It is usually said that the mood in which you wake up is largely dependent on the type of sleep you have been in. This in itself is a big proof of the importance of sleep in our lives. While sleeping, our body finally gets its share of rest and it also gets ample time in rejuvenating from all the wear and tear that it went through during the entire day. Not only this, the body is in its own working condition when we are sleeping as this is the time when it supports the healthy functioning of the brain as well as physical attributes of our body.