1. the Briton Tony Wright set the world record: He managed not to sleep for 266 hours. That is 11 days and 2 hours. The German record, on the other hand, is only 38 hours and 35 minutes. However, as so much sleep deprivation is hazardous to health, this category was removed from the Guinness Book of Records.
2. 93 decibels - This is how loudly Kare Walkert snores. This corresponds to the noise level of passing trucks on the highway. Poor neighbors!
3. sleeping makes you slim! When sleeping, a 70 kg person burns around 65 kcal per hour. With an average of 8 hours of sleep, that's a total of 520 calories. How many calories you burn depends on your body weight, among other things.
4 Some people (around 25%) can become conscious in their dreams. This is called lucid dreaming: the dreaming self is aware that it is dreaming during the dream. This occurs during REM sleep, but is very rare overall (0.3% of all dreams). Targeted techniques can help to train the occurrence of lucid dreams and have shown success in the treatment of nightmares, for example.
5. sleep is the best preparation for exams! A study showed that the well-rested group made fewer mistakes in a memory test than the group that was deliberately kept awake. So: treat yourself to a good night's sleep before an exam instead of pulling an all-nighter!
6 In the Middle Ages, it is said to have been normal for adults to sleep in two stages. In between, they are said to have been awake for about an hour, working, studying or praying, for example.
7 We humans devote a lot of our lives to sleep. We spend around 24 years sleeping! In comparison, we "only" devote 5 years to eating.
8. sleep deprivation works like alcohol! According to the German automobile club ADAC, the ability to drive after 17 hours without sleep is equivalent to a blood alcohol concentration of 0.5 per mille. After 24 hours, the driver behaves like with 1 per mille.
9 Seals can even sleep in the water. They float up and down in the water and repeatedly come up for air at the surface without waking up. Remarkable!
10.some sea otters hold hands when they sleep so that they don't drift off or get separated. Isn't that cute! For the same reason, some other sea otters wrap themselves in seaweed before sleeping.
11Birds sleep while they fly. How do they do that? They only sleep with one half of their brain. The other, awake half is used to navigate, for example to take advantage of rising air currents so that they do not collide with other birds. Frigate birds are a well-known example.
