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Do birds sleep in flight?

Overview of attention for article published in The Science of Nature, May 2006
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (98th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (75th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
2 news outlets
blogs
3 blogs
twitter
3 X users
wikipedia
17 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
1 Google+ user

Citations

dimensions_citation
78 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
147 Mendeley
citeulike
1 CiteULike
connotea
1 Connotea
Title
Do birds sleep in flight?
Published in
The Science of Nature, May 2006
DOI 10.1007/s00114-006-0120-3
Pubmed ID
Authors

Niels C. Rattenborg

Abstract

The following review examines the evidence for sleep in flying birds. The daily need to sleep in most animals has led to the common belief that birds, such as the common swift (Apus apus), which spend the night on the wing, sleep in flight. The electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings required to detect sleep in flight have not been performed, however, rendering the evidence for sleep in flight circumstantial. The neurophysiology of sleep and flight suggests that some types of sleep might be compatible with flight. As in mammals, birds exhibit two types of sleep, slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep. Whereas, SWS can occur in one or both brain hemispheres at a time, REM sleep only occurs bihemispherically. During unihemispheric SWS, the eye connected to the awake hemisphere remains open, a state that may allow birds to visually navigate during sleep in flight. Bihemispheric SWS may also be possible during flight when constant visual monitoring of the environment is unnecessary. Nevertheless, the reduction in muscle tone that usually accompanies REM sleep makes it unlikely that birds enter this state in flight. Upon landing, birds may need to recover the components of sleep that are incompatible with flight. Periods of undisturbed postflight recovery sleep may be essential for maintaining adaptive brain function during wakefulness. The recent miniaturization of EEG recording devices now makes it possible to measure brain activity in flight. Determining if and how birds sleep in flight will contribute to our understanding of a largely unexplored aspect of avian behavior and may also provide insight into the function of sleep.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 3 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 147 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 4 3%
Canada 3 2%
Germany 2 1%
Sweden 2 1%
Brazil 2 1%
France 1 <1%
Portugal 1 <1%
Chile 1 <1%
Israel 1 <1%
Other 2 1%
Unknown 128 87%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 34 23%
Researcher 29 20%
Student > Master 23 16%
Student > Bachelor 19 13%
Student > Doctoral Student 5 3%
Other 18 12%
Unknown 19 13%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 82 56%
Environmental Science 11 7%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 7 5%
Neuroscience 6 4%
Engineering 4 3%
Other 14 10%
Unknown 23 16%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 42. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 November 2023.
All research outputs
#891,379
of 23,794,258 outputs
Outputs from The Science of Nature
#126
of 2,195 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,201
of 67,299 outputs
Outputs of similar age from The Science of Nature
#2
of 8 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,794,258 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 96th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,195 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 67,299 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 8 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 6 of them.