Do birds fly for days while over the ocean? How do they sleep?

Question

Do birds fly for days while over the ocean? How do they sleep?

In: Biology

Answer 1

I can actually answer this because of a podcast my 3yo son loves.

Two methods: Some birds will fly for weeks at a time non-stop, and they sleep in burst of only a couple seconds, and usually glide while doing so. They do this a few times a minute, so it builds up.

Others essentially sleep half their brain at a time, like some whales do. Like, they literally keep flying on autopilot while the left half or right half of the brain sleeps, then they switch sleeping to the other side.

Science-wise, we have NFI how animals do either of these things, but that’s because we have NFI about the sleep mechanism in general.

Edit: NFI = “No fucking idea”. I wrote this on my phone when I woke up at 2:30am, so got lazy towards the end. Apologies for any confusion. Where I live, I think it’s a normal acronym/phrase. My bad.

Edit 2: The podcast is “Imagine This” which is done by ABC Kids here in Australia. The ABC Kids Listen app has a few really good ones for young kids, from educational to fun to go-the-fuck-to-sleep. The ABC Kids Listen live streaming is geoblocked outside Australai, bit you can still download the app and listen to most podcasts anywhere in the world (according to their FAQ’s). Also they have transcripts of almost all their podcasts for the deaf and hard of hearing.