They prefer to socialize than rest. But it doesn’t hurt, because they always have the afternoon the day. And they also make the bed, (almost) like us.
Wild orangutans sacrifice hours of sleep at night to spend time with other members of their kind.
The behavior, unveiled on a study this Wednesday at Current Biology, shows us that primates give great importance to socialization and that the “naps” they take throughout the day-like many humans-help us recover from the night.
The team led by Caroline Schuppli e Alison Ashbury From the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior accompanied 53 adult orangutans in Sumatra, Indonesia, from 2007 to 2023, from dawn to dusk, according to the. The habits of sleep, food, travel and social interactions of primates were recorded.
Every night the big primates build a nest of leaves and branches at the top of the trees, where they are on average almost 13 hours – between 5:40 pm and 6:30 am. But part of this time is not spent sleeping. It is estimated that, in total, they sleep Less than 10 hours a night.
During the day, the orangutings They make small seades that, on average, last about 10 minutes eachtotaling approximately 76 minutes daily divided by various distinct periods and nests. Like humans, these short pauses prove to be effective in recovering energy after sleepless nights.
The factor that most influenced the duration of night sleep was the presence of other orangutans to sleep nearby. For each additional social partner in a nearby radius, the orangutings reduced the time in the nest by about 14 minutes. And when the first individual abandoned the nest in the morning, the rest followed the example, waking up and starting their day earlier than when they slept alone.
Socializing seemed to be more important than rest, and other environmental factors influenced the standards of sleep, like the temperature and the amount of rain.
Cold nights and hot days have reduced rest periods, suggesting that there is a great to sleep thermal track, as with humans. The amount of travel during the day also interfered: the more orangutans moved, the less time left to sleep, usually due to bedtime later. On the other hand, On rainy days, the number and duration of the sixths increased.
A curious aspect observed by scientists was the practice of orangutings to prepare their nests before bed, behavior that resembles the human ritual of “Make the bed”. For the daytime twins, the nests were simpler and faster to build, while the night nests were more elaborate and comfortable.
