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Sleep can follow a physiological or behavioral definition. In the physiological sense, sleep is a state characterized by reversible unconsciousness, special brainwave patterns, sporadic eye movement, loss of muscle tone (possibly with some exceptions; see below regarding the sleep of birds and of aquatic mammals), and a compensatory increase following deprivation of the state, this last known ...
The primary physiological and biochemical concerns for an aestivating animal are to conserve energy, retain water in the body, ration the use of stored energy, handle the nitrogenous end products, and stabilize bodily organs, cells, and macromolecules. This can be quite a task as hot temperatures and arid conditions may last for months, in some ...
The physiology of underwater diving is the physiological adaptations to diving of air-breathing vertebrates that have returned to the ocean from terrestrial lineages. They are a diverse group that include sea snakes, sea turtles, the marine iguana, saltwater crocodiles, penguins, pinnipeds, cetaceans, sea otters, manatees and dugongs.
Diving reflex in a human baby. The diving reflex, also known as the diving response and mammalian diving reflex, is a set of physiological responses to immersion that overrides the basic homeostatic reflexes, and is found in all air-breathing vertebrates studied to date.
Aquatic animals generally conduct gas exchange in water by extracting dissolved oxygen via specialised respiratory organs called gills, through the skin or across enteral mucosae, although some are evolved from terrestrial ancestors that re-adapted to aquatic environments (e.g. marine reptiles and marine mammals), in which case they actually ...
Marine mammal adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle varies considerably between species. Both cetaceans and sirenians are fully aquatic and therefore are obligate water dwellers. Pinnipeds are semiaquatic; they spend the majority of their time in the water but need to return to land for important activities such as mating, breeding and molting.
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All mammals sleep, but porpoises cannot afford to become unconscious for long because they may drown. While knowledge of sleep in wild cetaceans is limited, porpoises in captivity have been recorded to sleep with one side of their brain at a time, so that they may swim, breathe consciously, and avoid both predators and social contact during ...