Do you need a brain to sleep?

Written on 09-09-2021

In a curious new study, scientists have found that sleep pre-dates the brain—meaning that animals don’t actually need a brain to sleep. In a tiny animal called the hydra, these researchers observed a “sleeplike state,” despite the fact that the hydra doesn’t actually have a brain. This provides “strong evidence that animals acquired sleep-related mechanisms before the evolutional development of the central nervous system and that many of these mechanisms were conserved as brains evolved.”

All the details here, on LiveScience.com