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Summary: Whales sleep by only allowing half of their brain to rest at a time so that they may look out for danger and breath air at the surface of the water. Discover a whale's sleeping patterns with information from an experienced aquarist in this free video on whales.
Erin Carter has been an aquarist at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco since September 2004. She has worked with over 20,000 animals, focusing on teleosts and elasmobranches....read more
"Hello, my name is Erin Carter and I'm a Aquatic Biologist at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco. I've been an Aquarist for five years. I am scuba certified and I have a degree in Marine Biology. Well actually that's an interesting, interesting question because whales are not fish so they cannot breathe under water. They must come to the surface and consciously breathe out there, blow holes. So what they found is that whales let half of their mind; half of their brain sleep while the other half stays awake and it's conscious of breathing and it's conscious of dangers in the surrounding area. So some whales will do this at the surface and it's called logging. They look like a big log rolling from side to side and some do it way far underneath the water. But basically they let one half of their brain sleep and then they switch and let the other one rest."
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