Book Review: The Animals Sleep

The Sleep Education blog invited Beth Smith to review The Animals Sleep: A Bedtime Book of Biomes, a children’s picture book published in 2011 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Now in her sixth year of teaching, Beth teaches first-grade students at St. Paul Catholic School in Valparaiso, Ind. She received a bachelor of science in elementary education from Valparaiso University.

Thomas Heffron has creatively written a story, The Animals Sleep: A Bedtime Book of Biomes, geared toward younger students. Through reading it in a classroom setting, children are able to make cross-curriculum connections in both reading and science.

Students are first introduced to the scientific fact that both humans and animals need sleep. They are then transported from a warm, cozy bedroom into various biomes of multiple animals. The vivid and colorful images created by Lina Safar allow children to visualize the environments in which different animals live.

They will identify familiar animals like a zebra, cow and snake. Connections will be made to which animals live in each biome. Students will also comprehend the physical aspects of each biome.


The pictures match the written, descriptive quality of the book, presenting the children with a great and deeper understanding of the biomes and how each animal sleeps. The rhyme and rhythm presented on each page allow for an exciting and smooth read.

At the conclusion of the book, the children are moved out of the pond, grasslands and desert, and they are placed into their bedroom, a familiar place of sleep. This allows them to comprehend the importance of sleep in their lives just as it is important to the animals.

Children will thoroughly enjoy this story and be drawn into the world of the animals and sleep!

The Animals Sleep: A Bedtime Book of Biomes can be purchased from Amazon or directly from the AASM. Also available from the AASM is I See the Animals Sleeping: A Bedtime Story. Learn more about these books and find other educational resources at SleepEducation.com.

Book Review: I See the Animals Sleeping

The Sleep Education blog invited Vicki Rakowski to review I see the Animals Sleeping: A Bedtime Story, a children’s picture book published in 2011 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Vicki is assistant director of youth services for the Lisle Library District in Lisle, IL.

How does a lion sleep? A red fox? How about an elephant? With this new title from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, young readers will learn exactly how their favorite animals go about getting their rest.

The information is delivered simply – charmingly illustrated scenes of sleeping animals and their habitats juxtaposed with a four-line rhyme and a fact box. From flamingoes to platypuses, the scenes are elegantly done, but never overly arty -- it’s impossible not to smile at illustrator Roberta Baird’s rendition of a dozing sea otter.

The “Sleep Fact!” boxes offer lots of points for discussion -- the differences in the ways many animals prefer to sleep, as well as their ideal habitats, and wonderful details about the animals themselves, but this information is never overwhelming.

While the majority of the rhymes are pitch-perfect for both the audience and the subject matter, readers may find themselves stumbling here and there over a few forced lines. This book, however, offers solid, engaging nonfiction for toddlers and preschoolers about one of their favorite subjects: the animal kingdom.

This makes a great addition to any children’s collection, and will be a terrific support to early childhood educators in their lesson plans and circle time. Recommended for toddlers and preschoolers.

I See the Animals Sleeping: A Bedtime Story can be purchased from Amazon or directly from the AASM. Also available from the AASM is The Animals Sleep: A Bedtime Book of Biomes. Learn more about these books and find other educational resources at SleepEducation.com.

Canine Narcolepsy: Dogs Help Advance Research

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that affects hundreds of thousands of people. And you may be surprised to know that dogs can have narcolepsy too.

“Nobody knows how frequent narcolepsy is in dogs,” AASM member Dr. Emmanuel Mignot told Discovery’s “Is It Possible?” He is the director of the Center for Narcolepsy at the Stanford School of Medicine.



The first reports of narcolepsy in dogs were published in 1973 and 1974. Over the following decades Stanford researchers were able to make important discoveries by studying canine narcolepsy.

In 1999 Mignot and colleagues determined that canine narcolepsy is caused by disruption of a hypocretin receptor gene. Hypocretin is a hormone that helps promote wakefulness. This led to their groundbreaking discovery that people with narcolepsy lack brain cells that make hypocretin.

More recently Mignot found evidence that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disorder. And his research shows that bacterial infections such as strep throat may activate the immune system response that kills hypocretin cells.

People with narcolepsy tend to have excessive daytime sleepiness. Frequent naps are common. And sudden, irresistible “sleep attacks” may occur in unusual situations.

Some people with narcolepsy also have “cataplexy.” This unique symptom involves a sudden loss of muscle tone while you are awake.

Your head may drop, or your knees may buckle. You may completely fall out on the floor. Episodes of cataplexy tend to be triggered by a strong emotion such as laughter or surprise.

Watch videos of dogs with narcolepsy and cataplexy on the Web site of the Stanford Center for Narcolepsy. Read more about narcolepsy.

Animals & Sleep: Clockless Reindeer and Falling Seals

Research continues to show how sleep differs among animals.

One study published last month examined the daily, “circadian” rhythms of reindeer. Researchers from the U.K. and Norway found that its melatonin production is not controlled by a circadian clock.

“The molecular clockwork that normally drives cellular circadian rhythms is evidently weak or even absent in this species,” the authors concluded.

Melatonin is a hormone that is produced in the brain. It helps your body regulate the sleep/wake cycle.

An internal body clock helps control melatonin production. Natural daylight – and the lack of it at night – also helps drive this cycle.

But melatonin production in reindeer appears to be driven only by light and darkness. This has little effect on their sleep patterns, reports LiveScience.

Reindeer sleep after they eat. As ruminant animals, they tend to eat eight to 10 times a day.

Another recent study took a closer look at northern elephant seals. They never come out on land during long migrations of up to eight months at sea.

They almost constantly make repetitive, deep dives. And they rarely surface for more than a few minutes at a time. So when do they sleep?

A research team from Japan and the U.S. studied six juvenile seals. They measured body position and 3-D diving paths.

They found that the seals sank quickly to a depth that would be safer from predators. Then they rolled over and sank on their backs during slower “drift” dives. They wobbled in a way that resembled a falling leaf.

This drastically slowed their descent rate. As a result they had time to rest or process food.

The authors also suspect that the seals may sleep during the descent phase of these dives. A few seals that drifted in shallow areas even hit the seafloor without reacting, reports Natural History.

Read more about animals and sleep.

Image by Tristan Ferne

A Book of Sleep for Children

Born in South Korea and educated in London, illustrator Il Sung Na makes his American debut with A Book of Sleep.

“It's the rare picture book that, upon arrival, feels as though it has been around for years already,” noted Publisher’s Weekly.

The opening line sets the stage for the story: When the sky grows dark and the moon glows bright, everyone goes to sleep . . .except for the watchful owl!

This wide-eyed owl proceeds on a moonlit journey to see how the other animals sleep the night away.

“One of the sweetest and most original of the new nighttime picture books,” author Liz Rosenberg wrote in The Boston Globe. “Both children and adults will welcome its…archetypical beauty.”

The book contrasts sparse text with rich, textured illustrations of a starry night.

“So thoroughly does the book inhabit its sleepy world,” author Daniel Handler commented in a New York Times review. Handler is best known for penning the A Series of Unfortunate Events books under the Lemony Snicket pseudonym.

A Book of Sleep is available as a 24-page hardcover book from Knopf Books for Young Readers.

In September the Sleep Education Blog described two other sleep books for children.

Learn more about sleep and animals.

Talking Turkey Sleep

A lot of turkeys will be sleeping well today. They can finally get some rest now that the Thanksgiving season is ending.

So how do turkeys sleep? Researchers in Mexico studied wild turkeys - Meleagris gallopavo - to find out.

The study shows that the turkeys had a “polyphasic” sleep pattern. They slept multiple times in a 24-hour period. But these sleep periods tended to concentrate between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m.

Overall, the sleep period of turkeys occupied about 46 percent of the day-night cycle. Almost all of the sleep period involved slow wave sleep.

The turkeys had very short episodes of rapid eye movement sleep – or REM sleep. The average duration of the REM sleep phase lasted about 7.7 seconds.

But the frequency of REM sleep periods was high. Turkeys had an average of 268 phases of REM sleep during the day-night cycle.

The authors report that the sleep characteristics of turkeys are similar to other bird species. Learn more about sleep and birds.

Read more about sleep and animals. Find out how much other animals sleep on the Neuroscience for Kids Web site.

Image by Matt Knoth

Sleep is for the Birds

You may have never come across a sleeping bird. And that’s the way that birds like it.

Nature writer and bird surveyor Val Cunningham recently wrote about the life of sleeping birds for the Star Tribune.

Most birds keep their sleeping spots well hidden. They’re fearful of becoming a predator’s late-night snack. So they may roost in the same kind of secluded areas that they would use for a nesting site.

But there is great variety in where they choose to sleep. They may lock their feet onto a branch in a dense shrub. Other birds make their bed in a hole inside a tree.

They may doze alone in a tall chimney. Or they may sleep in a group at the top of a tree.

Cunningham also describes some intriguing sleep habits of birds.

Some birds can sleep with one eye open and half of their brain awake. This enables them to detect danger.

Most songbirds travel at night during migration. This can cause them to become severely sleep deprived. As a result they may take brief “power naps” during the day.

“Sleep talking” even occurs among some birds. They might make soft sounds or quietly rehearse songs as they sleep.

Learn more about sleep and animals.

Image by shapour bahrami

Into the Deep: Exploring the Science of Sleep

The Oct. 24 issue of the magazine ScienceNews features four articles that focus on the science of sleep.

“The Why of Sleep” takes a look at current theories that attempt to explain the purpose of sleep. Saving energy. Promoting learning and memory. Regulating emotions. Boosting the immune system.

Sleep must provide some benefits that are preferable to waking activities. But the primary function of sleep - if there is one - remains a mystery.

One certainty is that sleep is necessary. “Dying to Sleep” examines the many health risks associated with sleep loss.

Animals need sleep too. But “All Kinds of Tired” shows that animals have a diversity of sleep styles.

And “Sleep Gone Awry” explores how sleep research is leading to a better understanding of sleep disorders. These studies may lead to the development of more effective treatments for problems such as insomnia and narcolepsy.

Sleep is for the Dogs

It’s Labor Day, so it’s a good time to catch up on some sleep. Maybe you can find an unoccupied room where you can sneak away for a nap.

If you need inspiration, you can check out the photos of these dogs. Visitors to LATimes.com caught their dogs napping everywhere from the shower stall to the flower pot.

Does your dog have a serious case of daytime sleepiness? If so, maybe it’s because of your sleep apnea.

A recent post on the Sleep Better Blog by AASM spokesperson Dr. Lisa Shives tells of a patient with severe obstructive sleep apnea. Often his dog would paw at him and wake him up during the night.

But now he is using CPAP therapy to treat his sleep apnea. The result? He and his wife – and even their dog – are all sleeping better.

Of course, there is one dog that may not be sleeping well today. Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog would like to remind you that dogs can have sleep problems too.

Image by Cristiano Baro

We Sleep to Be Awake

In April the Sleep Education Blog examined the question of why we sleep. Research has been exploring complex answers to this simple question.

But a definitive explanation continues to be elusive; the question remains an “unsolved mystery.”

Now an editorial by UCLA’s Jerome Siegel suggests that sleep may not fulfill a universal function across all species. Instead sleep appears to be adaptive; its role may be based on “ecological variables” that differ from one species to another.

This would explain why the sleep habits of animals are so diverse, reports the Origins Blog. For example a brown bat sleeps more than 20 hours per day; but a giraffe only sleeps for about four hours.

Siegel views sleep as “a variant of dormant states” seen in both the plant and animal kingdoms. He proposes that sleep “optimizes the timing and duration of behaviour.”

So how and when an animal sleeps is based on its waking needs. The brown bat wakes up at the time of day when its food source is most plentiful; it’s the optimal time to eat.

Why do we sleep? Perhaps we need to understand why we are awake, Siegel suggests. That may be how we find the clues to the mystery of our need for sleep.

Image by Dhyanji

Do All Animals Sleep?

Over the weekend a New York Times editorial longingly observed how “effortlessly” farm animals seem to sleep. In contrast, people seem to work at sleeping – or at avoiding sleep as much as possible.

“What a lot of shut-eye all the other species get, and how sleep-deprived humans seem in comparison!” the editorial lamented. “To grasp the force of human culture, all you have to do is consider how hard we try to organize our sleeping.”

One way researchers try to unlock the mysteries of human sleep is by studying sleep in other species. Results show a diversity of sleep habits.

A 2008 study involved brown-throated, three-toed sloths. The results emphasized the importance of studying animals in their natural environment.

In captivity sloths sleep for more than 16 hours per day, BBC News reported. But the study found that they only slept for 9.6 hours in the wild.

Last month BBC News reported on a study of fire ants. It found that queen ants fell asleep 90 times a day; these sleep periods lasted a little longer than six minutes. Their total daily sleep was more than nine hours.

In contrast, a single worker took 250 naps per day; each nap lasted just longer than a minute. Their total sleep was only 4 hours and 48 minutes a day.

The article added that this productivity may come with a cost: The worker ants only live for months; the queen ants live for years.

A 2009 study examined the sleep of dolphins. A dolphin only sends half of its brain to sleep; the other half remains conscious.

The dolphins in the study were able to remain vigilant over a five-day period, MSNBC reported. They also showed no signs of sleep deprivation.

It’s often assumed that every animal sleeps in one way or another. But is this true? Do all animals sleep?

It’s a difficult question to answer; it can be hard to tell whether an observed animal is sleeping or in a state of “quiet rest.”

UCLA’s Jerome Siegel published a review of the evidence in 2008. According to Siegel, we may be wrong to assume that there is a “universal state of sleep” among all animals.

“The evidence that all animals have a state that meets the accepted definitions of sleep is quite poor,” he concluded.

How much do animals sleep? Find out on the Neuroscience for Kids Web site.

Image by Alfonso Gonzalez