this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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I know evolution is governed by chance and it is random but does it make sense to "ruin" sleep if there's light? I mean normally, outside, you never have pure darkness, there are the moon and stars even at night. In certain zones of the Earth we also have long periods of no sunshine and long periods of only sunshine.

I don't know if my question is clear enough but I hope so.

Bonus question: are animals subject to the same contribution of light or lack of it to the quality of sleep?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

animals have a huge evolutionary pressure to pick either the day or night to be their active period

Cats: I reject your reality and substitute my own. I'm not sure if there are any other animals that are crepuscular, but I assume there are.

Very neat write-up; thank you!

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

Yeah, crepuscular animals are weird. They have circadian rhythms (the circadian clock is incredibly well conserved across vertebrates and to a lesser extent, across invertebrates), but I'm not actually entirely sure how their circadian clock work to get them to wake up at dawn/dusk