Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why birds do not fall while sleeping

news.cnrs.fr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 191 posts

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#121

Post by Agentus »

avar wrote: post #77

This article doesn't even try to address what I feel is the deeper and more interesting question (but probably one that can't be answered): Why is it that horses, cows, giraffes and birds have all had to come up with a purely passive solution of "locking" themselves in place, either via their joints (for the four-legged), or via the tendon mechanism described here for birds? I.e. why wasn't in simpler in evolutionary…

Evolution is like DFS depth first search, it isnt looking for an optimal way optimally its just going down a branch until it finds a satisfactory solution.

Sleep according to sleep scientist matthew walker, isnt what it seems. If i remember correctly theres even more brain activity and it serves certain goals like behavior refinement, among other things not just refreshing yourself. There might not be more benefit by more sleep.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#122

Post by Agentus »

johnisgood wrote: post #115
mr_mitm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can even adjust our sleeping position while sleeping, possibly to avoid bedsores? But perhaps avoiding falling requires more processing power.

Yes, adjusting our sleeping position has to do with the sensation of pain, a stimuli (pain, discomfort, pressure points) that cause most individuals to reposition during sleep, i.e. it is the sensation of pain from pressure buildup that triggers the need to move during sleep. You are right, it is to prevent prolonged compression of tissues, to avoid bedsores, nerve damage, etc. That said, this is not the whole story,…

I can do more than that. I used to wake up sweaty half the time from sleeping as child. Now that never happens as an adult, i instead wake up with my sweater mysteriously taken off. I wish sleep self would learn to put a sweater on if it turns cold though.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#123

Post by Agentus »

jajko wrote: post #117
interludead wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep has crucial role in survival and well-being

Yeah but what role? 24h always at least a bit running brain has also crucial role in survival. I get some form of maintenance is needed, but 8h every day seems like an overkill for very significant disadvantages. Many other mammals require significantly less sleep.

According to sleep scientist mathew walker, it serves multiple roles, replenishment of resources obviously, but also behavior refinement (whatever you practice during the day gets practiced excessively while asleep), and sleep also is a creative and solution search.

He mentions that sleep is so crucial that despite how vulnerable it makes organisms to be debilitated 8 or whatever many hours a day, what it provides more than counterbalances that massive evolutionary vulnerability.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#124

Post by e40 »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #80
meindnoch wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, why didn't any animal evolve a way to avoid sleep completely?

I thought that dolphins could avoid having to sleep while travelling long distances by having part of the brain asleep and then switching when tired. I could just be misremembering things, so I’m not certain.

Each half sleeps alternately. Perhaps sleeping in water as a mammal requires mich more processing power.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#126

Post by TeMPOraL »

SamPatt wrote: post #98
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK key insight into evolution is not randomness but rather sheer amount of compute. Specifically, evolution is a massively parallel flood algorithm that will try every single mutation. Barely any of them will have positive impact on organism fitness, but some will.

Also worth pointing out that billions of years already sounds like a long time to humans, but once you grasp how quickly everything is moving at the cellular or molecular level then it becomes a really reallllllly long time.

Random factoid I picked up from The Machinery of Life: how do various proteins inside a cell know to find and bind to a specific chemical or protein they need? They don't - everything inside a cell just constantly bumps into everything else, and because of how fast things move at this scale, it doesn't take long for any single thing to touch approximately every other thing inside the cell. I.e. turns out random walk is a viable search mechanism at nanometer scale.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#127

Post by macintux »

avar wrote: post #76
silisili wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adults never choose to crawl, unless in tight spaces or drunk off their rocker.

Yes we do, e.g. there's a sweet spot when scaling an incline (especially if there's easy handholds, e.g. a grassy incline) where using all fours is much easier and natural than making the same trips on two legs, even though you'd be perfectly capable of doing that too (i.e. I'm not talking about proper wall climbing).

You’re right, but if I can extrapolate from myself to most adults, that’s approximately never.

I think I’ve done that once in the last 10 years, and I spend a fair bit of time in the woods.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#128

Post by cassepipe »

wruza wrote: post #107
smusamashah wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you notice these flaws you are seeing it in very very short term. What we are today is what eventually worked for a million years. The design you see today is the way it is because it had to be robust enough (including those problems) to survive to this day. The examples you quote do look like a problem today, but I think they must have worked to some benefit to bring us here.

They must work just well enough. Nature doesn’t strive for an ideal, cause it has no ideas. It’s a semi-working minimum based on another semi-working minimum. A duplicated bone is just infinitely more likely than a completely new organ. And you don’t have to be free from cancer or arthritis or heart diseases if your population leaves just enough offspring in time. Iow, it’s not only robust enough, but just robust eno…

So evolution is a big pile of hacks ? :)

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#129

Post by crazygringo »

Aachen wrote: post #74

Tangential but for my information, does anyone else find this article's thin font takes noticeably more effort to read? I'm not sure if it's just me (I might need to get a better display that can output more nits in this bright room) since the site owners apparently think it's good

Not just you. The font is absolutely too thin to be used for body text.

It might be more readable on low-res screens that hint the strokes to a full pixel width, but on Retina screens it's simply too hard to read.

Thin weights like that are meant for display uses (titles, posters, etc.), not body text.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#130

Post by beAbU »

cassepipe wrote: post #128
wruza wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must work just well enough. Nature doesn’t strive for an ideal, cause it has no ideas. It’s a semi-working minimum based on another semi-working minimum. A duplicated bone is just infinitely more likely than a completely new organ. And you don’t have to be free from cancer or arthritis or heart diseases if your population leaves just enough offspring in time. Iow, it’s not only robust enough, but just robust eno…

So evolution is a big pile of hacks ? :)

Hacks imply some amount of intelligence, identifying a flaw or shortcoming, and trying some innovation to work around it.
Post reply on HN