Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
I'm saying that sleep is a vestigial evolutionary trait shared by many mammals and other creatures have enter into periods of dormancy or hibernation.
It has been seen in certain extreme cases that lack of sleep does not neccessarily lead to negative side effects or death provided you have the proper brain condition or structure to accomodate this. If you look into the ontological origin hypothesis of why sleep developed and what it is for, one hypothesis says that sleep is simply an adaptive function...for instance preserving the individual at night where more dangerous environmental conditions are prevalent and our sensory abilities are diminished...getting the individual to seek refuge and enter into dormancy until day because we don't need 24-hours to feed ourselves.
I found the Vietnamese farmer, his name is Thai Ngoc and hasn't slept for 33 years after suffering a severe bout of fever. He's been healthy since only reporting "grumpiness".
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I looked into the cases and the articles are very skimpy on information.
As far as I'm concerned these are myths, at best.
I'm just fascinated that the body would be able to do that, despite any neurological consequences, seeing as we rely on sleep so much.
Interesting stuff, fictitious or not.