What animals sleep standing up?
In the wild, animals don’t have beds to sleep on.
In many cases, they sleep standing up to be ready for predators who might attack while they’re resting.
If an animal is already standing, it can simply lower its head or shut its eyes and fall asleep immediately.
In some situations, a small animal sleeps in a standing position to conserve body heat.
Cat
If a cat sleeps curled up, its body is touching the ground and absorbing the cold from the earth.
In this position, it has insulated itself from the cold by curling into a ball.
However, if it sleeps standing up, there will be space between its body and the ground that doesn’t touch any source of coldness.
Any heat the cat’s body produces will radiate into this space and keep it warm.
Monkey
Monkeys also sleep standing up for a similar reason.
They curl up to sleep, but sometimes they fear predators might carry them off.
So they sleep in a tree with their heads pointing downwards from the branch from which they’re sleeping.
This way if a predator comes, the monkey will wake up from the movements of its body as it tries to climb up.
On top of that, a monkey sleeps with one eye open at all times to keep watch for predators.
Giraffe
A giraffe’s sleeping habits are an unusual situation because they sleep while standing.
Giraffes rest by kneeling down and leaning against a tree or on the ground.
Sometimes they sleep by sleeping while standing up, but they fall over when sleeping like this and can’t stay asleep for more than a few minutes.
Giraffes also sleep while bending over with their necks resting on their legs.
However, because giraffes are so tall, the best way for them to get comfortable is to lie down and put their legs up in the air.
Lion
Lions sometimes sleep standing up or lying down in a position similar to how dogs do it.
To keep cool, they tend to sleep in the shade or with one-half of their body on hot sand.
They do this because only half of their bodies are touching a hot surface while the other is resting comfortably on a cold surface.
Horse
One of the most famous animals that sleep standing up is a horse.
Horses sleep for very short periods at once, usually around 30 minutes at a time, and they sleep very lightly.
While horses are sleeping, their legs remain on alert so if an emergency were to happen, they would be able to run.
Red Panda
One of the most unusual animals that sleep standing up is the red panda.
It has thick fur all over its body except for its fingers and toes which have thick hair on them.
The red panda’s feet are too small to walk comfortably on but they’re perfect for gripping trees, so the red panda sleeps standing up by curling its body around a tree branch and gripping the trunk with its claws.
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