Reindeer appear to snooze throughout the day while chewing their cud. This may be an adaptation to their Arctic habitat, where food is abundant in the summer and they must constantly eat to gain enough weight to survive the winter.
To help break down the fibrous plants that make up their diet, reindeer ruminate – that is, they regurgitate food from their stomach back into their mouth for extra chewing. And they often take on a trance-like stare as they chomp. “You can sort of see it in their face, they’re a bit gone,” says Gabriela Wagner at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research. “But nobody knew if they were actually asleep because no one has ever measured the brainwaves of reindeer before.”
Wagner and her colleagues used an electroencephalograph (EEG) – metal electrodes attached to the heads of four captive Eurasian tundra reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus), which recorded electrical pulses in their brains over the next few days as they ate, slept and moved around.
The reindeer's brainwave patterns revealed that, when ruminating, they were in a light stage of sleep known as non-REM sleep, suggesting the animals can recharge while chewing their cud. "It looks very much like human sleep – it's got the same stages of sleep spindles and slow wave activity," says Wagner, describing bursts of brain activity visible on the EEG. They also found that the more time the reindeer spent ruminating, the less they needed additional rest.
[...] Resting while ruminating may also explain why, unlike most other species that sleep more in winter, reindeer appear to sleep the same amount regardless of the season.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.012
(Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Thursday December 28, @10:45AM (2 children)
Anyone who's had to attend lunchtime meetings developed this skill years ago.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday December 28, @01:04PM (1 child)
Lunch is for eating, meetings are for sleeping. Don't mix them, it's not good for your health.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 28, @07:02PM
Not if you work for Santa and are preparing for that end-of-year sprint.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday December 28, @10:58AM (2 children)
During the winter they can see into the ultraviolet spectrum [ucl.ac.uk] down into 350-320nm to help spot tasty vegetation. Apparently, their eyes change with the season [apnews.com] and the ultravision disappears as the sun comes out and begins its relentless 24/7 glare for the summer.
Like any other profession, the professional herders have their own working vocabularies. In this case it can be hundreds of specialized words. Strangely the one related to foraging used to get mistranslated and that has caused trouble. The working word refers to not just the quantity and quality of lichens and vegetation but the accessibility to the animals. As climate collapse creates icier winters, the ice prevents grazing and causes poor foraging. The icy barrier gets lost in translation and bureaucrats misinterpret the complaints as lack of quantity rather than lack of accessibility. Nowadays the herders check in occasionally with the animals. In the old days, herders traveled with their animals and worked with the different personalities of the reindeer: one of them leads, one alerts, one is the outer boundary, one breaks trail, one finds fodder, one keeps them calm, etc. But that was before the overgrazing and focus on quarterly profits. Like anywhere else in the world, overgrazing can ruin land ...
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 28, @03:03PM (1 child)
I watch sheep and goats foraging. They will go to great lengths to reach foliage higher in the trees. I suspect that ultraviolet light is what makes that higher foliage look so enticing. I certainly can't see any difference between a leaf 4 feet above ground, vs a leaf 12 feet above ground. But both sheep and goats show a preference for that higher leaf. (Well, Romney sheep do, not all sheep browse the same, some hardly seem to browse at all if there is enough grass and forbs available.)
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday December 29, @05:02AM
I watch sheep and goats foraging. They will go to great lengths to reach foliage higher in the trees.
Yeah, I remember that 'cultural landscape' with the graze lines in fields, meadows, and even other areas. It used to be everywhere, not long ago, but so many farms have been driven under since then and even those areas which have not been paved and built on are without livestock any more. It's like the reverse of the lily pond riddle: if a pond starts out with a lily pad which grows double each day and if the pond is fully covered on the 30th day, then what percentage of the pond was covered on the second to last day, the 29th day? The availability of food won't be a problem until suddenly one day it is.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday December 28, @01:45PM (3 children)
If I had to regurgitate up food from my stomach for a second chewing I would want to be out of it to cause bile just isn't all that tasty ...
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday December 28, @04:11PM (2 children)
well, I don't have the mind of a reindeer but.. it could certainly be the case that the taste of their own bile+food is hardwired to be pleasurable and tasty to them. In general, "transplanting" your own instincts, emotions, and memories into any other creature is probably a recipe for hell on Earth. Even projecting your own sense of self into another human would be highly undesirable. We should all probably stop projecting our instincts and experiences. a rampant example of this cognitive failure in modern times is menwomen.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday December 29, @12:52PM (1 child)
Me neither, hence I said my stomach. But sheep and other regurgitators could like the taste. I can't rule out it's very yummy to them. If it was disgusting I doubt they would do it, after all they reject other food seeming based on taste. So they clearly get something out of it, or is the second chewing mainly just part of the digestive system? I don't actually know.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday December 29, @02:12PM
I can't rule out it's very yummy to them.
I presume it is. The food is chewed, fermented in part of the stomach, and then re-chewed and swallowed for final digestion [tamu.edu]. Microbes play a role, obviously, since fermentation happens. But who knows for sure, they (cows and reindeer) do like fermented grass or hay aka silage [roansdairy.co.uk].
Like deer and moose, they also like a bit of salt. In the past, used shoe hay (including Carex vesicaria aka bladder sedge), which was used to insulate winter boots in the old days, could be served as a small treat when disposed of.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.