Re: SLEEPING ELEPHANTS & GIRAFFES

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

Interesting info.

On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 darren.naish@port.ac.uk wrote:
> To speculate about the sleeping postures of extinct dinosaurs, you 
> must know what big extant mammals do first.
> [...]
> Giraffes do not sleep deeply standing up, but do spend most of the 
> night in this position. Once every couple of hours, they fold their 
> legs up underneath their bodies, belly pressed to the ground, and 
> actually place their head on the ground too. In this position they 
> sleep deeply for about 10 minutes, and then raise their head and 
> stand up again. Obviously with the head on the ground they are 
> tremendously vulnerable to predators. That giraffes do sleep in this 
> way was only proven about 4 years ago by way of infra-red nightime
> photography. It would be interesting to see if African natives ever 

This prompts a question on my part - why did it take until the use
of infra-red nighttime photography to document this aspect of giraffe
sleeping behavior? Do they not sleep this way in zoos? I understand
that behavior in zoos is not typical of animals in the wild, but I
hadn't considered change of sleep habits.

> [...]

rich