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Exploratory Essay

Decent Essays

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. The Giraffe is believed to be the mammal with the shortest sleep period of between 10 and 30 minutes with a total of about 120 minutes in 24 hours. This means that the sleep-wake cycle of the giraffe is characterized by short sleep and long wake periods. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 2009, an environmental adaptation

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