Rare Footage of a Humpback Whale Sleeping
What is a whale's favorite bedtime story? A whale of a tale, of course!
Although we had never really thought about how whales sleep, this video, uploaded to YouTube, shows just how the giant aquatic mammals do it in their very own way.
Courtesy of underwater photographer Kieran Bown and his Panga MX production crew, the video is a snippet from the full 20 minutes of unique footage they captured while in the Turks and Caicos Islands for a research project.
They captured this footage of an inverted humpback whale in the waters surrounding Great Sand Cay.
"The whale was completely at peace in the water," Bown says.
While humans may shift between their back and side while sleeping, whales drift into sleep and end up vertical.
According to Animal Planet, humpbacks must remember to breathe when they are sleeping, so they shut off only half of their brain during slumber. They must come up for a breath every once in a while, shifting between which side of their brain is resting.
As peaceful as she looks, we are going to steer clear because the last sleeping whale we saw swallowed a wooden boy .
