keiferski9 hours ago
Here in Northern/Central Europe, the idea of hibernating, or at least sleeping for 15+ hours a day, is pretty appealing during the winter. The number of daylight hours is very small and the weather in general is unpleasant. My assumption is that a few thousand years ago, prior to reliable widespread artificial light, people slept a lot more.
umeshunni9 hours ago
Could that have been the case a few hundred year ago as well? Artificial light, even candles and oil/wood, was fairly expensive till 200 or so years ago.
keiferski8 hours ago
Probably true as well, although I wonder if the more widespread agriculture and crafts meant that people just stayed inside in semi-darkness working instead of sleeping.
jmclnx8 hours ago
I would be very surprised, humans evolved in Africa where there is no Winters like what exist in the far north. So my answer, no.
pedalpete10 hours ago
Very interesting. We're in the neuro/sleep/health space, so hibernation is an area of interest to me.
What I think wasn't addressed in this article is how a lack of physical activity may affect a human body, or how animals that do hibernate adapt to a loss of muscle mass.
Most animals are stronger by weight than humans, so perhaps this isn't as much of an issue for them.
piva008 hours ago
> Most animals are stronger by weight than humans, so perhaps this isn't as much of an issue for them.
As far as I know, most animals don't have to train to gain muscle mass, they just have it from their nutrition, losing muscle mass is a last resort of their bodies to consume calories during starvation but they will gain that muscle mass back if fed properly. Not so much with humans, we need to constantly use our muscles to signal our bodies they're needed, as an adaptation if those aren't needed we will not be carrying extra muscle mass around.
I might be wrong since the last I read about this was many years ago but it's how I remember it from studies of great apes, big cats, etc.
jauco7 hours ago
That's an interesting thing that I never thought about!
Did a quick google. This stackexchange answer has some interesting points: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/98207/do-animal-...
philipov9 hours ago
I always thought that's what Seasonal Affective Disorder was all about.
fuzztester9 hours ago
to tfa author: just chill, willya?
_dain_9 hours ago
god I wish I could just snooze through the winter. wouldn't have to commute in the dark.
fuzztester9 hours ago
ye ... zzz