Half-brained whales?

[theprimrosepath]

I scoured the tags and saw a few posts on whales, but nothing about this, so...

Comments

[skalja]

... "Snooze like no other"? What the hell are they talking about? This is old news, like decades old. All cetaceans do this.

I'm not ragging on you, by the way - you had no reason to think this wasn't new info. It's just terrible journalism.

(At a guess, skimming the article, I think the new data from the recent study is how little cumulative sleep they get, not the fact that they switch back and forth between brains.)

[theprimrosepath]

I googled whale sleep. Egad, you're right. And they even mention that dolphins sleep the same way in the second half of the article. Bad show, Discovery journalist. Where was your editor?

Wish I could get by on that little sleep, though.

[gemfyre]

Migratory waders (and I guess most migratory birds that undertake long legs of flight) also rest one half of the brain and then the other.

Nifty ability, but it makes me tired just thinking about it.

[saciel]

... I was teached that dolphins do that when I was EIGHT YEARS OLD.

Wtf is for me that they say they discovered it recently?! wtf, people, wtf.

(If I was a dolphin kid, I wouldn't sleep, too, as we see some posts below ;))

[fusion_mobile]

The artistic side of the brain switches on and off while the sleep?

I wonder what they're dreaming of...

[ebenizer]

vaginas and kittehs

[tetrabinary]

Or corndogs.

[maeda]

the matrix.

[deg_chick]

Wow people are being fucking assholes. It wasn't posted here and some people find this new. I never knew that and think it's fascinating, the rest of the people can eat me.

[dinogrrl]

I already knew it and I still think it's fascinating :}. It doesn't have to be new to deserve being posted here!

Think if us humans could do that--right half of the brain goes to sleep, but it's the right side of the body that continues to function. weeeiiiird

[theprimrosepath]

I didn't know it either and now I would love to experience a day inside a whale brain just so I could see what naps are like. :)

I do have to agree with Rabicanm though - the headlines/blurbs and some of the phrasing in the article are misleading. The fact that whales and dolphins rest half their brain at a time is apparently not new at all; but the fact that they sleep so little is recent news.

Either way, nifty. :)

[skalja]

Dude, I said explicitly that I was criticizing the article, not the op. How does that make me an asshole?

[tv_on_mute]

lol you said sperm

[tetrabinary]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, that brought out my inner twelve year-old.