different to the publishing industry and how
for centuries people have chosen to pick up
a new book, reading just one page, a few, or
even the whole thing in one sitting!”
I point out that no one automatically turns
the pages of a book for me. I do not hear back.
Still, Netflix is not the worst culprit. While
BBC’s iPlayer remains at 15 seconds, Amazon
Prime’s auto-play is a nerve-shredding two
seconds: catching it in time is akin to return-
ing a serve from Federer. (I asked Amazon
to confirm it was two seconds. It refused to
do so.)
And yet, as much as those in the sleep game
see streaming services as the enemy, they
do acknowledge the role other tech giants
have played in fighting back. Apple, in par-
ticular, has realised the value in selling sleep,
mostly via a range of functions that stop users
using its devices – iOS 12, released last year,
included features that limit (Screen Time),
cajole (Bedtime) and outright ban (Downtime).
Two years ago, Apple purchased Finnish
sleep-tracking company Beddit for use
in Apple Watches. The message seemed clear:
Apple was Team Sleep.
And so, when you are sitting there wonder-
ing if you should keep watching or scrolling or
simply go to bed, chances are you’re making a
choice between the largest companies on earth:
Netflix (£127bn value), Amazon (£789bn),
YouTube (owned by Google: £583bn),
Facebook (£375bn) and Twitter (£21bn) on
the one hand and Apple (£789bn) on the other.
At the same time, also remember this: Apple
will be the first to ask for your eyes tomorrow,
with its TV+ service.Every creature sleeps – or at least
something like it. Even worms,
scientists have found, get shut-
eye, despite having no eyes to
shut. Prod a sleeping worm and
it will not wriggle.
Elephants need half as much sleep as
humans: just three to four hours. Tigers and
lions, on the other hand, require 15. The brown
bat is the real lazy loller of the animal kingdom,
being awake for just five hours and snoozing
through the other 19. Nothing helpfully guides
it. You can be large or small, predator or prey,
nocturnal or not – it doesn’t seem to matter.
But while every species sleeps, not every
species dreams. In fact, only birds and
mammals – the latecomers of the evolution-
ary timeline – have perchance to.
The outliers are aquatic mammals – dolphins
and killer whales – who don’t. The reasons
are obvious: during REM sleep the brain
paralyses the body. This isn’t ideal if you
have to come to the surface to breathe. Even
non-REM sleep is tricky: they achieve it by
being unihemispheric, meaning only half oftheir brain sleeps at any one time. The other
side will then take over, like shift work.
Some animals, however, do have it both
ways. The fur seal, which splits its time
between land and sea, dreams only on land.
And some species, scientists suspect, may be
starting to dream. Researchers think a particu-
lar Australian lizard may have begun to catch
some REM, but, as reptiles are unable to fill
in dream diaries no one can be entirely sure.
Once, in 1969, scientists thought they caught
a whale dreaming for exactly six minutes. We
may never know what about.
Perhaps most remarkable is the case of
the white-crowned sparrow. Most migrat-
ing birds have evolved the ability to sleep
mid-flight using micro naps that last just a
few seconds. Yet the white-crowned
sparrow manages to stay awake all trip and
suffer no ill effects – but only during the
migratory period. The American military has
spent millions studying it with the hope of
creating sleepless super soldiers. They are
yet to succeed.
Our current idea of sleep – eight hours and
done – is a relatively new one. Ask any sleep
researcher and they will tell you we actually
have two sleep periods built into our circadian
rhythms, or natural sleep cycles: a large one
at night, then a smaller one just after lunch.
This is why our energy dips in the early after-
noon. All hunter-gatherer tribes we’ve come
across sleep this way: after all, early after-
noon is often too hot to hunt. The Romans
were big fans – it’s from them we get the
word “siesta” – as are most Spanish-speaking
countries today.
In Japan, some companies are currently
attempting to revive the idea by introducing
sleep pods at work, though this is likely not
unrelated to the fact that Japanese employ-
ees are so overworked and exhausted they’ve
taken to falling asleep everywhere: on the
train, at work, during dinner, just as they’re
about to start a sentence. The practice is so
widespread that the Japanese even have a
name for it: “inemuri”, which means “sleep-
ing while present”. It is considered a badge
of honour.
And yet, barring the odd aberration – in the
late 17th and early 18th centuries Western
Europeans slept in two nighttime spells sep-
arated by several hours of wakefulness in the
middle, during which they would read, write,
pray or have sex and literally no one has any
idea why – a single wodge of sleep is what
we’ve settled on.
Even here, though, not all sleepers are the
same. In 2009 scientists located a rare genetic
mutation – carried by around one to three
per cent of the population – that saw some
people sleep less than six hours a night with
no adverse affects whatsoever. Less lucky >>Countingsleep...45%
The increase in your cravings for
junk food when you’ve underslept24%
The increase in heart attack rates in the
spring, when most people lose an hour’s
sleep due to daylight saving time6 hours19 minutes
Britons’ average night’s sleep19 hours
Amount of time that brown bats
spend sleeping every dayDouble
Risk of cancer if you routinely sleep
less than six or seven hours a night£787m
Valuation of relaxation app Calm,
which features ‘sleep stories’ read by
Matthew McConaughey and Stephen Fry£10 m
Expected revenue from sales of weighted
blankets by UK start-up Mela Comfort in
the final quarter of this year (they have
only been available since last winter)SLEEP09-19FeatureBusinessofSleep.indd 177 03/07/2019 14:40
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