Reindeer Sleep and Eat Simultaneously, Saving Precious Time in the Short Arctic Summer

You may think you’re good at multitasking, but no one can do two things at once quite like a reindeer. These animals are able to eat and sleep at the same time. Isn’t that the dream?!

The Reason Why

Summer is very short in the Arctic, which means reindeer don’t have a lot of time to store food for the long winter months. Therefore, they store up all the fat they can during summer – and that’s pretty much all they do in those months. Reindeer are so busy eating in the summer months, that they don’t pause to sleep – they just do it at the same time.

What the Experts Say

Neuroscientist Melanie Furrer of the University of Zurich explains that reindeer manage to live in an area with such long winters by “being able to ruminate and sleep at the same time, to save time in the summer.” If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around this concept, don’t feel alone. But as sleep physiologist at the University of Oxford, Vladyslav Vyazovskiy explains, “We need to be open-minded that there is not just one kind of sleep, the way that humans sleep, but there are other ways to sleep.”

Between this and meeting Santa, it seems that reindeer are living the dream!