1 of 1 Everything applies to reproduction: Antechinus males sacrifice good sleep — Photo: Erika Zaidpicture Alliance/dpa/Cell Press Everything applies to reproduction: Antechinus males sacrifice good sleep — Photo: Erika Zaidpicture Alliance/dpa/Cell Press
Sleep is vital for animals. Lack of rest can lead to serious health problems, mental confusion and even death it's no wonder sleep deprivation is used as a torture method. But it seems that a Oceanic animal sacrificers sleep in exchange for sex.
This is what scientists found out during observation Males of the genus antechinus, marsupial Australia's coastal foreststhose during the mating season “They become addicted to sex.” and putting aside sleep to devote oneself to the deed.
The paper, recently published in the journal Current Biology, reports the surprising biological discovery, which is likely related to natural selection, and is the first to document it Type of sleep restriction in a land mammal.
Using a combination of techniques, we show that males lose hours of sleep during mating and that this is reduced by up to half during one of the stages.
— Erika Zaid from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia
“In humans and other animals, restricting normal sleep duration leads to reduced wakefulness and the effect gets worse night after night, but antechinus do exactly that: Sleep three hours less every night for three weeks“, emphasizes the researcher.
Is sleeping less beneficial?
In the groundbreaking study, researchers used Acceleration measurement to track the movements of around 450 marsupials of this genusin addition to electrophysiological and metabolic measurements to quantify how much the animals slept.
The authors suggest that these animals may benefit from sleeping less during the mating season or may accept the inconvenience of staying awake to increase their chances of reproduction.
According to experts, reducing sleep can be a form of adaptation when the need to reproduce is “extreme.”
In fact, it's surprising that they don't sacrifice even more sleep during breeding season since they'll die soon anyway.
— Erika Zaid from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia
Tragic death and cannibalism
Antechinus are also rare in other ways.
- The males During their short lifespan of less than a year, they reproduce only once.
- Females can live for two years and have more opportunities to reproduce.
The research team also discovered that during the mating season Males compete for the most females to maximize their reproductive successwhy they do it 14 hours of sex with different couples.
Males only get one chance during a single threeweek mating season.
— John Lesku, principal investigator and researcher at La Trobe University
But all this effort has consequences: After the mating season, the monitored males developed skin changes, hair loss and reduced alertness.
Some die shortly after the single, short and intense mating season.
But his death also has another function: Young and females use the male's remains as a food source.
More sleepresistant than humans?
The study does not explain why some males die after the breeding seasonalthough researchers don't believe this is due to lack of sleep alone.
Out of ten males, only two died shortly after mating, and they were not the ones who slept the least.
🚨 Scientists also want to know more about how Antechinus deals with it Sleep loss that reaches levels that would cause people to behave as if they were drunk or drugged.
In future studies, the team wants to find out whether these animals are more sleepresistant than humans or whether they instinctively “just carry on.”
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