ArticleNature communications2016
Evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 97 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
97 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Sentinel Sleep Theory: Unweaving the biological function of REM sleep.Sleep medicine: X · 2026Article
- Induction of cortical on/off periods in awake mice fulfills sleep functions.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Poxvirus Infections in Common Swifts (Veterinary sciences · 2026Article
- Records of compass heading for long-distance ocean migrators show mid-ocean reorientation.Science advances · 2026Article
- Wintering Barnacle Geese Exhibit an Increased Behavioural Drive for Sleep After Sleep Deprivation Without a Clear EEG-Based Sleep Rebound.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Revitalizing the "biology" in "chronobiology".Npj biological timing and sleep · 2026Review
- Article
- DNA damage modulates sleep drive in basal cnidarians with divergent chronotypes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Widespread loss of sleep in independently evolved populations of wild-caught cavefish.iScience · 2025Article
- Feather Defects in a Juvenile Common Swift (Veterinary sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Changing cognitive chimera states in human brain networks with age: Variations in cognitive integration and segregation.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Neural Correlates of Flight Acceleration in Pigeons: Gamma-Band Activity and Local Functional Network Dynamics in the AId Region.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Local versus global sleep organization and the quest to determine sleep function.Neurobiology of sleep and circadian rhythms · 2025Article
- Bridging the gap between lab and field sleep studies: a proof-of-concept for studying wild rats in semi-captive environments.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Article
- An affordable solution for investigating zebra finch intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) signals.PloS one · 2025Article
- The cost of language: functionally over-dominant language circuits in the human brain may limit cognitive abilities and non-verbal executive functions.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- An electrophysiological correlate of sleep in a shark.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2024Article
- Development of a multisensor biologging collar and analytical techniques to describe high-resolution spatial behavior in free-ranging terrestrial mammals.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- A nonoscillatory, millisecond-scale embedding of brain state provides insight into behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
37 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many birds fly non-stop for days or longer, but do they sleep in flight and if so, how? It is commonly assumed that flying birds maintain environmental awareness and aerodynamic control by sleeping with only one eye closed and one cerebral hemisphere at a time. However, sleep has never been demonstrated in flying birds. Here, using electroencephalogram recordings of great frigatebirds (Fregata minor) flying over the ocean for up to 10 days, we show that they can sleep with either one hemisphere at a time or both hemispheres simultaneously. Also unexpectedly, frigatebirds sleep for only 0.69 h d(-1) (7.4% of the time spent sleeping on land), indicating that ecological demands for attention usually exceed the attention afforded by sleeping unihemispherically. In addition to establishing that birds can sleep in flight, our results challenge the view that they sustain prolonged flights by obtaining normal amounts of sleep on the wing.
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