Sleep?

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How Do Dolphins

All mammals sleep

and dolphins are no exception.

Dolphins brains, like ours, are divided into two hemispheres.

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Howeverdolphins sleep
While one brain hemisphere sleeps the other maintains breathing duties, motor behaviors and possibly also some vigilance against predators.

different than us.

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When dolphins are in sleep mode

they often lay motionlessly at the water surface or at the bottom of a pool, or they might swim slowly, sometimes with one eye closed, surfacing from time to time to breathe.

Dolphins appear to sleep or rest many times throughout the day and night.
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theorize that some animals have developed this ability to help them detect approaching predators or to periodically rise to the surface to breathe and monitor wave patterns, which keeps them from drowning.

Researchers

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dolphins seemingly enter a fully asleep state where both eyes are closed.

In captivity

respiration is automatic; a tail kick reex keeps the blowhole above the water if necessary.
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In this case

Anesthetized dolphins

but it is not known if dolphins in the wild

initially show a tail kick reex

reach this state.

Extensive research found new facts about how the brain of bottlenose dolphins works.

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Scientists in California and Russia have discovered that dolphins, including the killer whale mothers and calves do not sleep during the rst few months of the new baby's life.

Calf dolphins

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Jerome Siegel,

a neurobiology researcher,

says the sleep patterns he and his colleagues observed in the babies are "just the reverse" of all other mammals, which normally sleep the most after birth and gradually taper down to adult levels as they age.

"This is a challenge for the idea that sleep is necessary for brain and body growth".

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The Bottlenose Dolphin- by Stephen Leatherwood, Randall R. Reeve The Dolphin in the Mirror: Exploring Dolphin Minds and Saving Dolphin Lives - By Diana Reiss. Baby Dolphins Don't Sleep. UCLA Brain Research Institute. October 22, 2012. American Psychological Association. Monitoring animal sleep. Wikipedia

Information
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