Study
Nesting chinstrap penguins accrue large quantities of sleep through seconds-long microsleeps
Libourel, Paul-Antoine; Lee, Won Young; Achin, Ikuma; Chung, Hyunsu; Rattenborg, Niels C.
Science, 2023
Brain activity was recorded continuously from nesting chinstrap penguins in an Antarctic colony using implanted electrodes, alongside accelerometry and video, over days of incubation while the birds were exposed to predation risk from skuas and disturbance from neighbours.
- Studied in
- Pygoscelis antarcticus
- Sample size
- 14 nesting chinstrap penguins with implanted EEG recorders
The birds slept almost entirely in bouts of around four seconds, more than ten thousand times a day, accumulating over eleven hours of sleep in total. Sleep was frequently unihemispheric. Birds nesting at the colony periphery, at greater risk, slept in longer bouts than those in the more disturbed centre.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Sleep can be accrued in extremely fragmented microsleeps that appear to deliver at least some restorative function, allowing continuous nest attendance.
How NatureHQ reads it
This is a genuinely strange result and it should be reported as one. The obvious reading — that fragmented sleep works just as well — is not established, and the authors do not claim it. What was shown is that a bird under continuous predation and social pressure accumulates a normal daily quantity of sleep four seconds at a time, and successfully breeds. Whether those seconds do everything consolidated sleep does is exactly the open question, and it is more interesting than the headline. Note also that this is one species in one situation: it is a fact about incubating chinstraps, not about penguins.
- One species during one demanding life stage; sleep architecture elsewhere in the year is unknown.
- Whether fragmented sleep is functionally equivalent to consolidated sleep was not tested.
- Implanted recorders and handling may themselves affect sleep.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: American Association for the Advancement of SciencePublished in Science or Science Advances (AAAS).
doi.org/10.1126/science.adh0771
This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref on 2026-08-11.
NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-11.