Elephants Only Need Two Hours of Sleep Per Day

Whenever I try to run off of a couple of hours of sleep, I end up dragging myself through the day. I don’t know how elephants do it, man.

Via New Scientist:

Wild elephants average just 2 hours of sleep a night, making them the lightest-known snoozers of any mammal.

But why?!

Also from New Scientist:

Bigger animals generally tend to sleep less, probably because they have to spend so much time eating. “Elephants can eat up to 300 kilograms of food a day, so obviously it takes a long time for the trunk to get all that into their mouths, and that leaves less time for sleep,” says [Paul] Manger.

But even among large mammals, elephants seem to be light sleepers. The considerably larger grey whale sleeps for 9 hours a day and the giraffe for almost 5 hours. The domestic horse, at nearly 3 hours, is its closest rival.

So, the answer is food. They don’t sleep because they gotsta eat.

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