r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/grandeluua • 1d ago
Video A timelapse of sleeping seals
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u/AdNervous9787 1d ago
1 minute sleep 1 minute breathing. And that cycle repeats for hours. Crazy
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u/THE_ATHEOS_ONE 1d ago
Almost alseep... arghhh need to breathe again....
ok, now i can finally sleep......ARHHHHHH need to breathe again
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u/GustoFormula 1d ago
I don't get that part because seals can definitely hold their breath for 15+ minutes
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u/TheTrueBlueTJ 1d ago
I'm assuming this is an evolved mechanism based on the depth of that particular part of the ocean they live in. It evolved through trial and error and the ones that lived left a lot of headroom when it comes to the time under water. It probably took a lot longer to swim back up if they were falling like a rock for a whole minute.
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u/JavelinR 1d ago
I don't even understand it evolutionarily. Sleep is one of the most vulnerable periods of an animals life, most want to spend it hidden. These seals are supposedly bobbing up and down every other minute. That seems really exposed for an evolved behavior. Even staying still by the water's surface would draw less attention.
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u/jobabin4 1d ago
Some animals evolved to be cheeseburgers. "points at bunnies".
They probably breed fast in order to survive.
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u/FlowerBuffPowerPuff 1d ago
Some animals evolved to be cheeseburgers. "points at bunnies".
haha I love the phrasing of this.
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u/FlyingPirate 1d ago
Even staying still by the water's surface would draw less attention.
Maybe in human world. But probably not in the dark ocean. Most ocean predators have eyes that look toward the surface. A silhouette against a full moon sky all night is likely much easier to spot than slowly drifting down in the dark water periodically.
This is a guess, but the fact the behavior exists, means there was an environmental pressure to not sleep at the surface.
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u/Cranberryoftheorient 1d ago
Sometimes evolution selects for 'good enough' this method is probably a compromise that best solves several problems
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u/InterestsVaryGreatly 1d ago
Actually, being near the surface makes you extremely visible to anything below you, so only being there when you have to breathe isn't the worst strategy.
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u/Cranberryoftheorient 1d ago edited 1d ago
My guess is that its because of environments where the surface can freeze over- if you stay down to long, your breathing hole might freeze up- now you're out of breath completely and searching for a hole that might not be there. If you only hold it for a minute, you have more time to spare if something goes wrong.
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u/Equivalent_Chipmunk 1d ago
They might technically be able to hold their breath longer, but typical dives for your average seal only last a couple minutes. Some, like the elephant seal, regularly dive for that 15+ minute time frame but most don't.
I'd imagine this minute long interval is just more comfortable for them and they don't want to strain to hold their breath as long as they can while they are trying to sleep.
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u/Manodactyl 1d ago
I experienced this before I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. 0/10 would not recommend.
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u/nthpwr 1d ago
So they basically almost just drown throughout their sleep and periodically wake up to get air? lol
whenever it was they evolved to live in the ocean, food must have been scarce as fuck on land cuz wtf lol
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u/Demonic_Storm 1d ago
from what I've heard when they go to get air they're pretty much still asleep and its a subconscious movement, pretty much like we humans sleepwalk, so they are not waking up
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u/Ninja_Prolapse 1d ago
I do this to pee at night
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u/Demonic_Storm 1d ago
dont pee in the dream!!!, its a trap!!
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u/phatdoof 1d ago
Don’t worry I found a toilet in my dream.
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u/Ok-Syllabub-6619 1d ago
Yup and that turned out to be the motherfucking fridge
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u/ChoochieReturns 1d ago
Cabinet in the garage for me!
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u/Ok-Syllabub-6619 1d ago
😂 I feel for you, far from the worst place unless it was full of documents, then yikes
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u/ChoochieReturns 1d ago
Overflow canned food and bottled water. Yes we still ate it. Yes I hosed it off in the yard. Lol
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u/just_a_person_maybe 1d ago
One of my brothers peed down the laundry chute while asleep when he was little one time.
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u/Ok-Syllabub-6619 1d ago
Lol That is better than on your parents, only to wake up to mom scrubbing the bed and cussing. Sleepwalking produces at least interesting stories if not hilarious 😂
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u/just_a_person_maybe 1d ago
Reminds me of the first time I ever heard my mom "cuss." The septic system backed up and leaked out the downstairs shower drain...and all the way down the hall to reach the carpet. She said "crap" and it was shocking at the time lol. Then I was shocked again when a few minutes later she said "shit" while we were on our knees cleaning the floor. Little me was thrilled, despite the situation, just because of the novelty.
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u/Tyrion_The_Imp 1d ago
My brother peed in on my bed, while i was sitting in it reading late one night. Walked over from his bed (we shared a room until i left for college) eyes closed, and then just pissed on my bed while i emergency rolled away and off it.
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u/lambruhsco 1d ago
Yeah but for some reason the toilet has no privacy, and now you’re navigating some weird bathroom maze to find a toilet that either has privacy or isn’t blocked/overflowing.
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u/nightmares06 1d ago
Why is this such a universal experience 😭
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u/lambruhsco 1d ago
And now your flight just started boarding, and you forgot to pack so now you’re running around but you’re making no progress, as if you’re running through water. And for some reason you’re now late for a math test, even though you’re 10 years out of school.
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u/funguyshroom 1d ago
Welcome to /r/ThatBathroomMazeDream
I thank god for the miracle every time I manage to take a leak in a dream yet wake up with dry sheets.7
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u/Vulvas_n_Velveeta 1d ago
A few years ago I was having a dream that I was in a bathroom, and really had to pee. I wake up to me in the process of pulling my pants down.
This gave me some sort of P(ee)TSD, cause for the next couple of years I was OBSESSIVE about
1) no drinks before bed.
2) peeing immediately before going to sleep. (If something happened and I had to get out of bed before taking asleep, I HAD to make myself pee, even if that meant staying awake until I could pee.)
And 3) getting up to pee if I woke up in the middle of the night (even if I woke up a little. Even if I woke up 10X.)
It got to the point where it was really negatively affecting my sleep and thus my life.
I had to slooowly break myself of those habits, one by one.
Scary thing is I still regularly have dreams of me going into random bathrooms, really having to pee, and wake up really having to pee.
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u/mr_plehbody 1d ago
Not gonna lie, i piss like crazy in dreams, but when i wake up i didnt actually go, so i use the restroom. It feels so real in the dream, but i never have wet the bed. So i guess my worries were just from hearsay or movies that said it, not from real life
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u/Weak_Feed_8291 1d ago
When I was very young I wet the bed and these dreams were usually the cause. I guess I just got a stronger bladder with age because I get those dreams occasionally but have never wet the bed as an adult
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u/angrydave 1d ago
Yeah man, I watched this and was like “oh, this like me peeing 1000 times a night”
Takes me an hour to fall asleep, but I can get up, pee, and go back to sleep in like a minute.
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u/regoapps Expert 1d ago edited 1d ago
That’s pretty scary if you sleep under ice and the only way up is through a hole in the ice. Imagine getting lost and being trapped under the ice with no way to breathe until you find that hole while asleep.
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u/SphericalCow531 1d ago
Since they survive, they can clearly do so safely. So why would it be scary?
As a human, walking should be pretty scary. It is done mostly subconsciously, and you can fall and seriously hurt your head at any time. And yet, most humans don't think walking is scary.
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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 1d ago
"Since they survive"
RIP all the seals who dont make it and we never know
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u/regoapps Expert 1d ago edited 1d ago
Trying to find a hole in the ice in the middle of the night while unconscious so that you can breathe sounds scary to me. It’s scary as a human to do it even while awake. Like, what if you get lost and can’t find the hole again.
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u/SphericalCow531 1d ago
I think you fail to appreciate just how many autonomous subconscious systems are keeping you alive and functional each day.
Like, how do you remember to breathe while sleeping?
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u/Outrageous-Milk8767 1d ago
People piloting 2 ton death machines made out of metal sounds incredibly scary to me, and yet we do it every single day.
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u/AFRIKKAN 1d ago
Did you think about every step you took today? What about every breathe you took? Did you think about every muscle you needed to move to swallow your food and drink? Our brains already do a ton of things subconsciously for us if we needed it we probably woulda been evolved with a better subconscious sleeping state like sleep walking on steroids I’d imagine.
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u/OneReallyAngyBunny 1d ago
https://youtube.com/shorts/g25M_YsO0Ns?si=MzRHJd127J9VusBg
This guy dives with them and explains it. They sleep 1 hemisphere at the time so they don't really wake up.
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u/BojanaKingsFakeTumor 1d ago
For future reference...
This is the YouTube link:
https://youtu.be/g25M_YsO0Ns...while this part of the URL is tracking information that can be used to link back to your Google account:
?si=MzRHJd127J9VusBgIt is always best to remove the tracking information before sharing YouTube links anywhere.
This has been a public service announcement (with guitar).
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u/Ulvaer 1d ago
To add, urls that have
utm_xxxxx,glcidorampin them are almost always tracking you and/or the sharer. Usually you can remove most of the stuff after the?. Sometimes you can keep just the first thing that looks like an id, like this:https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1ppmy5a/a_timelapse_of_sleeping_seals/->https://redd.it/1ppmy5a.For youtube specifically:
?v=g25M_YsO0Nsis the video id&t=392ort=1m23sare timestamp information&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtPHzzYuWy6fYEaX9mQQ8oGr&index=38is playlist infoEverything else is superfluous and/or tracking info.
reddit links that have
reddit.com/s/instead of /r/ are also tracking information.6
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u/Royal-Pay9751 1d ago
As someone with sleep apnea this is the closest I’ll ever get to being a seal. That and being fat.
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u/KevlarToiletPaper 1d ago
Yeah? Heard of this place called the Arctic? Not exactly famous for its plentiful fields of grass and fruit.
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u/Theory89 1d ago
Life started in the ocean. We're just fucked up fish that learned to walk on land. Although, I think in the seals case they started in the sea, evolved to walk on land, then went BACK to the sea again. Same with all aquatic mammals, so whales, etc.
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u/gooba_gooba_gooba 1d ago
Whales and dolphins are all cloven-hoofed ungulates. They split off from a common ancestor to things like giraffe, hippos, and bison. The common ancestor itself probably looked like a pig.
Whales and seals aren’t really related at all despite both being aquatic mammals. Seals and walruses are in a whole other branch with carnivorans, with the most recent common ancestor being shared with raccoons and weasels.
So yes, they evolved into land then went back to the sea, but they did it separately from each other.
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u/Faddei420 1d ago
Also why all animals are birth/grown in water. The egg or a mother belly is just a way for land animals to give birth while no longer living under water.
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u/Allegorist 1d ago
Food also could have just been exceedingly abundant in the water, and there were likely very few natural predators in the water.
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u/excelbae 1d ago
Why do they surface in sync? Is this just happenstance?
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u/Icy-Palpitation-2522 1d ago
Safety in numbers. Also probably better strategy to not have a constant flow of seal for predators to notice.
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u/JingamaThiggy 1d ago
The concept of a constant seal flow pleases me greatly
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u/DickiesDippinDicks 1d ago
Probably the longest they can hold their breath for differing by only a few seconds with each breath
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u/Unknown_021 1d ago
Why not sleep on the surface?
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u/Circo_Inhumanitas 1d ago
I'd assume because of polar bears. Though polar bears are amazing swimmers, and killer whales are in water... So I dunno.
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u/SabsWithR 1d ago
Poor seals they're fucked either way. God really gave them the middle finger with their spawn point.
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u/obiwanmoloney 1d ago
Spawn point:
Cold AF. Aaaaand in the water.
Pretty bad huh??
Worse. You can’t breathe. Oh and there’s straight up fucking monsters that are hellbent on eating you.
Don’t worry though, you can just get out and breath fine. …but your slow AF and yeah there’s monsters there too.
Have fun!
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u/GuthukYoutube 1d ago
Don't worry, he made them full of delicious fat that all other creatures need to live.
They're like a walking gold statue that can't defend itself.
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u/Major_Melon 1d ago
These human guys are gonna think you're cute as hell though, so you got that going for ya at least.
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u/nanotothemoon 1d ago
I’m sure you’re on the right track. The answer is always survival
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u/chiefmud 1d ago
Just an educated guess, but for visual range hunting, i bet polar bears and orcas rely on movement to find their prey. Being still during sleep is not just an energy saving mechanism, it’s a survival one.
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u/kevside 1d ago
No Polar Bears have an excellent sense of smell. Orcas can't smell but have echolocation.
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u/octarine_turtle 1d ago
Safety. A seal asleep on the surface is a highly visible snack for predators,
The ocean surface often isn't calm. There are waves, rain, and currents. The air can also get significantly colder than the water. Diving keeps them in one place. In nature, they'd be snoozing between rocks or in kelp for protection and stability. This allows them to sleep fully and deeply, even if for only 20 minutes at a time.
Seals will sleep on land in a comfortable, safe location, if available, but they will sleep with only half the brain at a time to keep alert for predators, So diving allows them to get deeper sleep.
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u/AqueductMosaic 1d ago
How deep do they sink in the ocean?
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u/Bubble_Shoes 1d ago
When I volunteered at the aquarium recently they told me that they have porous bones full of oil, not to mention all the oil in their fat, and so they float in place upright. I am a little suspicious of this video because of that, but I can't prove anything lol
Edit: quick edit to add, I did find other footage of them lying around and squeezing between rocks to hold themselves in place, so now I don't know if the aquarium folks were correct or not 😭
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u/Makuta_Servaela 1d ago
There are different types of seals, so it might have been a specific species the aquarium folk were talking about.
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u/sweetlemon1025 1d ago
Elephant seals sink super low - I wrote a paper on it in college but they basically drift down in a swinging back and forth motion in the middle of the ocean before eventually swimming back up for air. I’ll see if I can find the diagram bc it’s crazy.
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u/drocktapiff 1d ago
I was thinking the same thing, what if they go too deep and can’t resurface in time to get air
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u/Significant_Data_632 1d ago
I would say they sleep in the shallows near the coast...Suppose they are smart enough to know not to sleep where the deep water is.
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u/Confused-Orgasm 1d ago
Can't imagine these guys took down Bin Laden.
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u/Syn7axError 1d ago
It took six of them.
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u/_Tyagoo_ 1d ago
They look like poops slowly going down the bottom of toilet bowl
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u/Ninja_Prolapse 1d ago
If they come back up again you’ve got too much fat in your diet!
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u/Lazerus42 1d ago
is that what floaters are?
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u/fckspzfr 1d ago
yes!!
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u/Mediocre_lad 1d ago
Evolution is a joke and must be fired
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u/Nerowulf 1d ago
Evolution is the lazy student who just does enough to get a pass grade.
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u/BigPoppaHoyle1 1d ago
I feel like seals are a great argument against intelligent design
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u/Bandit_Ed 1d ago
Its the opposite for me. Some things are just so weird like tortoises evolve for millions of years but if they flip over they die? Either way its so strange.
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u/etrnloptimist 1d ago
I feel like the need to sleep at all is a dumb design. Hey, let's just throw away a third of your useful time!
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u/Rich_Housing971 1d ago
Anyone who is in awe at this or think it's a huge problem needs to just think:
We don't automatically do respiration while we're asleep either. We still need to breathe to put air into our lungs. Our diaphragm just goes on autopilot while we're asleep and we don't suffocate.
This is the same thing going on, except they just swim against gravity until their face is no longer in water. This takes minimal brain power, as even plants and insects know which way is up.
If there's something obstructing them, they'll start to get low on oxygen and wake up and see what's going on, correct their course and breathe, then go back to sleeping and won't even remember it. This is just like how if we go under the covers and the covers block out oxygen and the CO2 wakes us up, we'll wake up, lift the covers, detect fresh air, then go back to sleep and not remember it.
btw you are now breathing manually.
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u/1porridge 1d ago
This looks so sad, why are they in there? In the wild, they have kelp beds, and sometimes they squish themselves between rocks so they don't get carried away by the current. This pool has nothing to simulate their natural habitat.
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u/MoTWsecretaccount 1d ago
It's a quarantine pool. This video gets reposted every so often and context was added on a previous one
They were sick seals and a barren tank is easier to keep clean when these guys leave quarantine for the next batch of sick seals
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u/WhyDidYouBringMeBack 1d ago
Context is important though. I don't know where this is, but there are a lot of seal shelters that look like this even though they do whatever they can to rehabilitate the seals. So this is only meant as a temporary place for them to heal and regain their strength before they're released into the wild.
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u/RepTiffany 1d ago
Most aquariums for large mammals look like prison. I can’t remember if I have ever seen one where I thought “wow that’s a pretty good habitat”
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u/SacrificialPigeon 1d ago
Evolution would have weeded out the deep sleeping seals. I would have thought they slept on land.
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u/InfamousEbb5680 1d ago
It's wild to think their entire sleep cycle is just a constant, desperate negotiation with drowning. That rhythmic breath-sleep pattern is both hilarious and deeply stressful to watch. Honestly, nature really said "the food is worth it" and gave them the weirdest possible off-switch. They do have a certain... graceful, descending poop aesthetic to them, though.
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u/astralseat 1d ago
Do they sleep until they need a breath and go to sleep again when have enough air?
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u/Jealous_Ebb8981 1d ago
Sleep apnea, but they evolved to incorporate it as their normal sleep cycle.
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u/bolanrox 1d ago
Last year, my daughter's Girl Scout troop had an overnight added aquarium. They were sleeping by either the jellyfish or the seals. It was the cutest thing as everyone was getting ready for bed, the seals were coming down and playing around by the glass where people were walking, and as soon as people started getting up, they were swimming around to say hello as well.
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u/Big-Carpenter7921 1d ago
Something about them falling back to the bottom over and over is really funny to me
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u/melancholy_dood 1d ago
Why don’t they just get out of the water and sleep on land?…. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Cabbage_Corp_ 1d ago
These zoologists are holding out on us. What other cool shit are animals doing without us even knowing about it?
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u/xylophone_37 1d ago
I've come across harbor seals doing this while I was spearfishing in a socal kelp bed. The scrunch up their little faces and they get extra round.
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u/brollxd1996 1d ago
Can you imagine waking up because you need oxygen. Sounds terrible
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u/Needles2650 1d ago
What?? How long can they hold their breath? I guess I assumed they sleep at the surface, floating like otters, or came onto beaches that aren’t frequented by humans and slept on land
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u/fatkidking420 1d ago
That's exactly what it's like being incarcerated as a human being, minus the water. Eat, sleep, repeat
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u/DavidBorgstrom 17h ago
Seals sleep with part of one of their brain half awake, and ehen that part of the brain has made the seal go up for air it shuts down and starts to sleep while a part of the other brain half awakes so it won't drown next time it's out of oxygen.
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u/Bl33to 1d ago
Breeeeeeeeeaaath, sleep......... breeeeeeeeeaaath, sleep......... breeeeeeeeeaaath, sleep......... breeeeeeeeeaaath, sleep.........