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Observation Of Wild African Elephants

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Wild African elephants may break sleep records for mammals. New data show that they seem to get by just fine on about two hours of shut-eye a night. Much of that snoozing took place while they were standing up. The animals lie down to sleep only once every three to four nights. Trying to figure out how much wild elephants sleep just by watching them 24 hours a day is tricky, especially in the dark. Much of what scientists had known about sleeping elephants came from animals living in captivity, notes Paul Manger. He is a neuroscientist, or brain researcher, at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. In zoos and enclosures, elephants have been recorded snoozing from about three hours to nearly seven during a 24-hour period. Using electronic monitors on …show more content…

The new data seem to now confirm they were right. Manger and his team shared their findings March 1 in PLOS ONE. What they learned Manger and his colleagues implanted activity monitors (similar to Fitbit trackers) in the trunks of two elephants. Both were matriarchs (female leaders) of their herds in the Chobe National Park. It lies in northern Botswana, a nation in southern Africa. The trunk on these animals is “250 pounds of muscle,” Manger says. That’s why, he says, these moms would hardly have noticed the small tracker implants. Trunks, like human hands, are important for exploring the world. Elephants rarely keep them still — unless sleeping. The researchers assumed that a trunk monitor that didn’t move for at least five minutes likely meant its host was asleep. Neck collars helped researchers figure out whether animals were standing up or lying down. The electronic devices tracked the animals over about a month. During that time, the elephants averaged just two hours of sleep a day. What’s more, the elephants were able to skip a night’s sleep without needing extra naps the next

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