We know that for animals like giraffes, keeping vigilance is the most important way to protect their lives. Do you know how giraffes sleep? Giraffes sleep in awkward positions!
And their legs are too long. If they lie down and get up again, it will be very difficult. So in the long evolutionary process, giraffes usually sleep standing, rarely lying down, and only a few minutes at a time. So giraffes also become the animals that need the shortest sleep time in mammals, with an average of only half an hour a day.
But recently British media released a group of photos of giraffes lying down and sleeping in strange positions. Some experts pointed out that these giraffes should be kept in captivity. Because there is no pressure to be hunted, these giraffes in captivity will sleep for a relatively long time, and can sleep for four or five hours at intervals every day.
Because the neck and legs are too long, sleeping and drinking water have always been giraffe's troubles. For example, when drinking the water in a ditch, they are always in an awkward position - they can only bend down to reach the water by spreading their front legs and pressing their bodies down. But because they are vulnerable to predators like lions, giraffes usually take a few days to drink, and more often they prefer to take water from the plants they eat.
How do giraffes sleep?
Giraffes spend most of their time standing and sleeping, usually standing and pretending to sleep. Because giraffe's neck is too long, it often rests its head on the branch when sleeping to avoid fatigue of its neck. The giraffe, like the elephant, needs to lie down to rest when it enters the sleep phase, which lasts about 20 minutes. However, it takes a whole minute for a giraffe to stand up from the ground, which greatly reduces its ability to escape during sleep. Therefore, giraffes lie down to sleep is a very dangerous thing, more often standing to sleep. When the giraffe sleeps on its stomach, two front legs and one back leg bend under its belly, the other back leg stretches on one side, the long neck bows to the back, sending the hairy head to the extended back leg, and the lower jaw is close to the lower leg. This scientific sleeping posture can not only narrow the target, but also jump up and run away in an emergency.