Overview

• Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, University of Konstanz and Universitas Nasional published the findings June 25 in Current Biology.
• Each extra nearby orangutan shortens an individual’s sleep period by about 14 minutes, chiefly through earlier wake-ups.
• Orangutans compensate for every hour of lost nest rest with a 12.3% increase in daytime napping, equating to roughly 10 extra minutes.
• Day nests are simpler and built in under two minutes, while night nests take around ten minutes to construct.
• Fourteen years of data on 53 adult orangutans at Sumatra’s Suaq Balimbing station show how social proximity and environmental pressures drive adaptive sleep homeostasis.