Penguin parents sleep for just a few seconds

WASHINGTON

It's a challenge for all new parents: Getting enough sleep while keeping a close eye on their newborns. For some penguins, it means thousands of mini-catnaps a day, researchers discovered.

Chinstrap penguins in Antarctica need to guard their eggs and chicks around-the-clock in crowded, noisy colonies. So they nod off thousands of times each day - but only for about four seconds at a time - to stay vigilant, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

These short “microsleeps,” totaling around 11 hours per day, appear to be enough to keep the parents going for weeks.

“These penguins look like drowsy drivers, blinking their eyes open and shut, and they do it 24/7 for several weeks at a time,” said Niels Rattenborg, a sleep researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany and co-author of the new study.

“What’s surprising is that they’re able to function OK and successfully raise their young," he said.

Chinstrap penguins, named for the thin line of black facial feathers resembling a chinstrap, usually lay their eggs in pebble nests in November. As with many other kinds of penguins, mated pairs share parenting duties. One parent tends to the eggs and chicks alone while the other goes off fishing for family meals.

While the adults don't face many natural predators in the breeding season, large birds called brown skuas prey on eggs and small fuzzy gray chicks. Other adults may also try to steal pebbles from nests. So the devoted parents must be always on guard.