Hi there, it's Matt here again and welcome back to yet another one of those quirky episodes entitled,

Sleep is Bloody Remarkable.

Now, in the last such episode,

we spoke at length about one bloody remarkable thing called Half

Brain Sleep. Well today is all about the equally remarkable fact that when it comes to dream sleep, we humans are special,

and I mean very special. Indeed, I'm even going to propose that this unique aspect of

human sleep is one of many reasons that justifies our hominid name.

Because the term Homo sapiens is derived from the Latin root meaning wise person and I'll come back to that in just a second

but let's return to sleep here is how we are special. Compared to old and new world monkeys as well as apes

such as chimpanzees and guerrillas, human sleep sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb in terms of slumber.

Or I should actually say two sore thumbs because first we are unique in the sense that the total amount

of time that we spend asleep is significantly shorter than all other primates.

We will typically average around 8 hours relative to somewhere between 10 to 15 hours of sleep that we've measured in all other primates.

The second thing, however, is that in striking contrast, we humans have a staggering and disproportionate amount of REM sleep, of dream sleep.

Because if you look look all other primates if you average them together

will come in at around about 9% of their sleep time dedicated to REM sleep. But in humans that number is somewhere

between 20 to 25% of all of our sleep time being dedicated to REM sleep dreaming.

In other words, humans have more than double the relative amount of dream sleep or REM sleep in comparison to all other monkeys and apes.

And to understand why this is the case is to understand the evolution of ape to man from tree to ground.

Today's podcast is supported by the Electroly Drink Company Element. Now it's actually spelled with four letters L, M, N T, element. I'm an exercise nut and I started buying their product a few years

ago to use for a couple of reasons. The first is sugar content. Element has no sugar in it. It also doesn't have any

coloring or artificial ingredients and I'm pretty diligent about trying to remove

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