Comment by jvanderbot
4 days ago
I don't think they meant "Modern" sleep. I think they meant "Only brief periods of highly energetic activity before returning to the usual activities were precursors to our modern consciousness/wakefulness"
4 days ago
I don't think they meant "Modern" sleep. I think they meant "Only brief periods of highly energetic activity before returning to the usual activities were precursors to our modern consciousness/wakefulness"
That is also what I am referring to. Energetic activity is required to live and to reproduce, those are the normal activities. An active creature may have evolved a state of dormancy for various reasons, but there was never an organism in a state of pure dormancy.
A seed?
If a seed doesn't stop being a seed, it has no descendants.
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Sleep isn't pure dormancy, though. Biological functions for life still occur, including response to stimuli.
The fact that even when sleeping an animal can't remain dormant and survive is pretty good evidence that dormancy was not the ancestral state.
Do sponges sleep?
They certainly aren't exclusively inactive, which is all that matters for this discussion.
Presumably. Some jellyfish sleep[1]
But do fungi and Archea sleep?
My guess based on what we read is yes and no.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/if-alive-sleeps-brai...
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