Professional Sleep-Multitaskers

19 hours ago
3 min read

By Brandon Koo Feb. 11, 2026

The frigatebird serenely glides across the open ocean, wings locked in place and eyes half-closed over waves that stretch for miles. A brief lapse of attention could result in a fatal plummet, yet the bird continues in a state of half-sleep and half-awareness. It rests yet remains just alert enough—for animals like the frigatebird, sleeping fully can be more dangerous than staying awake.

Sleep is essential for nearly all animals, but it takes varying forms across different species. Humans typically sleep in long, uninterrupted stretches, cycling through stages such as light sleep, deep slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep—all while remaining still and unaware of their surroundings. However, many animals live in environments where extended unconsciousness would be dangerous. Predators, extreme climates, long migrations and the need to protect offspring require animals to adapt their sleep cycles in ways that vary from human sleep.

Some animals are “extreme sleepers,” utilizing abnormal resting methods as a product of evolution and adaptation to unique circumstances. Extreme sleep has evolved in circumstances where the risk of complete unconsciousness outweighs the physiological costs of limited sleep.

Antarctica’s chinstrap penguins are a unique extreme sleeper species. During breeding season, penguin parents continuously guard their eggs and young while facing constant threats from predators and other penguins. Researchers Paul-Antoine Libourel of the Neuroscience Research Center in Lyon, France, and Won Young Lee of the Korea Polar Research Institute found that instead of sleeping continuously at night, they rely on thousands of microsleeps—each lasting only a few seconds—dispersed throughout day and night. A single adult penguin can take more than 10,000 microsleeps per day, getting necessary the rest while remaining alert, according to research published by the National Geographic Society.

Another phenomenon that birds and marine mammals exhibit is unihemispheric slow-wave sleep. In this state, half of the brain enters sleep while the other half remains awake and alert. Frigatebirds use this adaptation to sleep during their long expeditions over the ocean. An investigation conducted by Max Planck Institute for Ornithology reported that recordings from electroencephalograms (EEG) show that frigatebirds briefly enter slow-wave sleep without losing control of their wings or sense of direction. Bottlenose dolphins also depend on the same mechanism, which enables them to continue swimming and surface for air while one side of their brain sleeps. This adaptation prevents drowning while maintaining alertness for predators and surrounding conditions.

Due to technological innovation, great advances have been made in the research of extreme sleep in recent years. In the past, sleep studies were confined to laboratory settings, which could not replicate the complex risks animals face in the wild. Per reports from the Associated Press Science Desk, with the help of portable EEGs to monitor brain activity, accelerometers to measure motion, GPS devices to track migration routes and underwater sensors to record diving behavior, researchers are able to study these behaviors on a deeper level today.

“By examining animals that survive on fragmented or minimal sleep, scientists can identify which functions of sleep are essential for survival and which are merely beneficial, helping explain why sleep deprivation eventually becomes dangerous and where its biological limits lie,” Sarah Lofgren, Science Department, said.

After studying animals that sleep minimally, researchers shifted their focus to evolutionarily simple and neurologically vulnerable organisms—such as jellyfish and sea anemones—which lack brains yet still exhibit sleep-like behaviors. A research team in Israel observed that jellyfish enter periods of inactivity, respond sluggishly to stimuli and display rebound sleep after rest deprivation. Even more strikingly, research published by Israeli neuroscience laboratories and reported by National Geographic found that the duration of their sleep cycles closely resembles those of humans. This finding suggests that sleep evolved very early in animal history and serves a fundamental biological function independent of complex neural structures.

“The fact that brainless organisms still follow structured sleep cycles suggests that sleep evolved as a fundamental biological process, not merely as a function of complex brains, but as a necessity for sleep itself,” Sophomore Gauri Dubey said.

From the chinstrap penguin taking thousands of microsleeps a day to elephant seals groggily spiraling through the water, animals have shown their evolutionary ability to adapt to harsh conditions and tough surroundings. Their adaptations reveal that life does not rely on perfect circumstances; instead, it thrives by shaping sleep to fit the reality, showing evolution’s power to sustain life.

About the Contributors

Brandon Koo

staff writer

Brandon Koo is a sophomore at Leland High School and a staff writer for The Charger Account. He can be found on the tennis courts practicing, working out, or listening to R&B in his room. Brandon also enjoys going on sunset walks or taking bike rides on the hills.

Mingyue Xiao

artist

Mingyue Xiao is a junior at Leland High School and an artist for The Charger Account. She keeps busy reading, dancing, and drawing designs for her art projects.