Why does heat make us sleepy when we are tired? We naturally cool down when it’s bed time and we sleep better when our bodies are cool.
In: Biology
Part of it is a built in “governor” to keep you from overheating. Doing anything involving muscles generates body heat. If you’re already close to overheating, that could be dangerous. So we have evolved a system where the hotter it is, the less you feel like doing. You don’t *know* you’re doing it for health reasons, but the person who feels like napping through the hottest part of of afternoon is stressing their body a lot less than people up doing stuff. Look at all the African animals that nap every afternoon.
It’s similar to night making you feel like sleeping. Humans rely on sight more than most other animals. Other animals have much better smell, heat sensing etc than humans. So for humans, the desire to spend the dark hours tucked in a cave vs. out in the woods is an advantage by making it less likely to be found and eaten by something whose senses give it a big advantage in the dark.
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