Men sleep an average of 6 to 8 hours per night. It is less than the majority of mammals. A consequence of evolution and natural selection.
What sets humans apart from other mammals? A new study suggests that the length of our nights would be an important criterion for differentiating between species.
Published in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, by a team from Duke University in the United States, this work compares the number of hours of daily sleep of a hundred different mammals.
Men sleep on average between 6 and 8 hours per night. Led by anthropologist David Samson, scientists have created a database that details several sleep characteristics of 21 primates and other mammals of all kinds, including humans. The researchers used this database in particular to compare the duration of sleep and its intensity.
According to them, humans are among the shortest sleeping mammals. Some animals like macaques or lemurs can sleep between 2 and 5 p.m. every day!
Consequence of evolution
However, humans seem to benefit from much deeper, more restful sleep than other animals. Researchers observe that in men, 25% of the time asleep is in REM sleep.
This is the fifth phase of sleep, which occurs after slow wave sleep, and in which you can have dreams that you remember when you wake up. Compared to other mammals, this phase of sleep is repeated more often, and lasts longer in men, indicating a more restful sleep.
Researchers believe that these results are the result of human evolution and natural selection. An evolution that allows them to benefit from more efficient, shorter, but also deeper sleep.
This evolutionary transformation was surely necessary, according to the researchers, to prevent humans from being exposed to predators for too long during sleep, but also because the latter reaped benefits by gaining time on sleep for devote more to social interactions.
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