Wildebeest study gives more insight into sleep
Mating season plays havoc with the blue wildebeest’s sleeping patterns.
It is believed that during this time they do not sleep when females are around, using the time after the two- to three-week mating season to play catch-up.
These findings form part of a new study on the sleeping habits of the prey animal by Wits anatomical science lecturer Dr Illke Malungo, published last month.
It found the ungulate only gets about 4.5 hours of sleep a day.
This is one of many animals Malungo will study to inform a greater body of work that will look at different classes and species to document patterns of sleep.
She hopes the revolutions of sleep in animals will help us learn why we sleep and how human sleep works.
“It’s such a fascinating study if we can understand the animal better, then perhaps we can help conserve them better.
“But I’m really interested in the sleep field, and the hope is that these studies can inform us a little bit more about ourselves.”
Tests on the wildebeest were conducted using electrodes surgically placed on the surface of the brains of two wild male blue wildebeest in the Dinokeng Game Reserve in Gauteng.
Malungo said visual studies had suggested the animal slept for about two hours longer, but the actual science shows they get 28 minutes of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and 4.2 hours of nonREM sleep.
According to the SA Society of Sleep Medicine, REM is a phase of sleep where our eyes move rapidly and our muscle tone is low.
In this phase we are able to have vivid dreams.
Non-REM sleep is a light sleep during which one can be woken easily.
Malungo said she also chose this animal because of its annual migration between Tanzania and Kenya, when more than 1.5-million go in search of food and water.
“We’ve done similar studies on buck, but I thought what about the migration and the effect it must have on sleep.”
She said the study found that most of their sleep occurred from 3am until dawn.
“This could be a way to prevent predators.
“Lions hunt at night from around midnight to 2am.
“Just before dawn is also the darkest time, so they cannot be seen as easily.”
Prof Paul Manger, who also took part in the study, said the most interesting finding in his research was the amount of REM sleep the animal got as it upheld the theory that domesticated animals had more REM sleep.
The wildebeest had about 30 minutes of REM sleep 6% of their sleep time, similar to that of other non-domesticated herbivores.
He said REM sleep in humans was 24% of our sleep time, but in chimpanzees most comparable to humans
REM sleep was 15%.