These Penguins Take 10,000 Little Naps A Day — Seconds At A Time

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2023

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Sleep. It's an essential biological function that has long intrigued scientists. Researchers have studied everything from mice to fruit flies in the lab to get a better understanding of what happens when animals sleep — and why so many do it. This week, scientists finally added one piece to the elusive sleep puzzle: How wild chinstrap penguins sleep amid their noisy colony. Turns out, they do it over 10,000 times in seconds-long bursts throughout the day — totaling 11 hours when all is said and done.

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey Shortwavers, Aaron Scott here.
0:07.0	With me, Regina Barber.
0:09.0	And for our regular roundup of science news, the one, the only, Mary Louise Kelly is here as well.
0:15.0	Wihoo!
0:16.0	Glad to be back with you.
0:17.0	Thanks for letting me come by.
0:18.0	Mary Louise, as always, we're going to share three science stories in the news
0:22.0	that have caught our attention recently.
0:23.7	Yeah, we've got a story about microscopic robots made from human cells.
0:27.6	We've got a story about one animal that takes micronaps, like thousands of them each day.
0:32.4	And finally, a story about another animal that was thought to be extinct but is very much alive.
0:38.0	Wow, you had me at Micronaps, which sounds great because I never get them. Go on. Yes I totally understand but you
0:47.6	can catch a few links now and we'll tell you more in just a minute on this
0:51.5	episode of Shortwave the Science Podcast from NPR you're
0:53.0	a minute on this episode of Shortwave, the Science Podcast from NPR.
1:00.0	All right, Mary Louise, you're our guest.
1:04.7	Which topic would you like to start with?
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