Elephants only sleep 2 hours a day in the wild, wearables study finds

When you weigh more than 10,000 pounds, you need a lot of food just to survive. All those hours spent searching for grasses, roots and fruits means there's little time left over for sleep.

How little? Try two hours a day for African elephants in the wild, a new study found. If confirmed, that would be the shortest-known sleep time of any land mammal. 

These herbivores can also regularly go nearly two days without sleeping at all, according to the paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

SEE ALSO: Africa's elusive forest elephants are disappearing

Researchers followed two free-roaming female elephants inside Botswana's Chobe National Park. They outfitted each matriarch with an "actiwatch" — like a Fitbit for elephant trunks — and a collar with a gyroscope to monitor the elephants' sleep times and sleeping positions. Read more...

More about Fitbit, Conservation, Ivory Trade, Sleep Study, and Sleeping


via Tech Republiq