Do snakes sleep?

Do snakes sleep? Do they dream? These may seem like obvious questions, especially since almost every species of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, and invertebrate studied has been found to exhibit some kind of resting phase. But sleep is hard to study in snakes, at least in part because they seem never to close their eyes. Consequently, there is shockingly little research on sleep in snakes. A Google Scholar search for the terms "snake+sleep" returns papers about venomous snakebites to sleeping victims, sleepwalkers dreaming about snakes, and papers by Stanford geophysicist Norman H. Sleep on the geology of the Snake River in Idaho. But, despite the dearth of research, I promise this post won't be too much of a snooze...

Human EEG "brainwaves"

Sleep is a behavior that involves an immobile posture, decreased responsiveness to arousing stimuli such as noise and light, and rapid reversibility (the ability to quickly "wake up", as distinct from hibernation or a comatose state). The physiological criterion most frequently used to define sleep is the slowing down of "brain-waves" on an EEG. An EEG (electroencephalogram) measures electrical activity in your brain, which is caused by your brain cells talking to one another. Brain activity, which happens even during sleep, appears as wavy lines on an EEG recording, hence brain 'waves'. When mammals and birds are sleeping, they exhibit two alternating patterns of EEG activity: 1) slow-wave sleep (SWS, also called synchronized, quiet, or non-REM sleep), which is characterized by high amplitude (75-400 μV), low frequency (0.5-4 Hz) EEG waves, and 2) "paradoxical" sleep (PS, also called desynchronized, active, or REM sleep), which is characterized by low voltage (5-10 μV), high frequency (13-30 Hz) EEG waves that are physiologically more like those in awake animals (hence the name "paradoxical"). In humans and cats, paradoxical sleep is associated with rapid-eye movement (REM, measured by electro-oculography or EOG), complete muscle relaxation (measured by electromyography or EMG), muscle twitching, irregular breathing/heartbeat, and, in humans at least, with dreaming.

Lizards wearing EEG-recording equipment while awake and asleep From Flanigan 1973

Although sleeping patterns are enormously variable across the animal kingdom, most mammals and birds tested exhibit both SWS and PS, or variations on that theme. In some basal mammals and birds (echidnas, platypus, ostriches), eye movement and relaxed muscle tone are associated with both quiet and active sleep. Periods of rest or quiescence associated with EEG changes similar to those seen in mammalian sleep are clearly present in turtles and in crocodilians, but EEG data suggest that these animals do not exhibit REM sleep. Some experiments have found REM-like sleep in lizards, whereas others have not. Experiments in which lizards, turtles, and crocs were subjected to continuous arousal for 24-48 hours showed that they spent more time sleeping afterwards and that their brains produced more high-voltage spikes. Tortoises given the drug atropine, derived from the mandrake plant and used to produce deep sleep in humans since at least the fourth century B.C.E., also produced more spikes, suggesting that EEG spikes are in fact analogous signs of quite sleep in reptiles and mammals. Interpreting EEG data is complicated because SWS waves differ between mammals and reptiles, perhaps because reptile and mammal brains differ in structure, particularly with respect to the neocortex, the source of these waves in mammals. Furthermore, some reptiles sometimes seem to exhibit sleep-like brain activity when they are awake, perhaps because ectotherms basically fall asleep when they get cold.

Waking (top) and sleeping (bottom) python EEG and EMG waves. From Peyrethon & Dusan-Peyrethon 1969

The single study of a snake was done by French comparative sleep researchers J. Peyrethon and D. Dusan-Peyrethon, who also studied sleep in fish, caimans, cats, and mice in the 1960s at the Laboratoire de Médecine Expérimentale in Lyon. They used EEG to monitor the brainwaves of a four-foot African Rock Python (Python sebae) over two days. They reported that sleep-like brain waves were produced almost 16 hours a day, increasing to over 20 hours following feeding, and that these brainwaves corresponded with slower breathing and heart rate, some muscle relaxation, and perhaps a lowered behavioral response threshold. They did not see any evidence for active sleep in the EEG. As far as I can tell, this is the only study ever conducted on sleep in a snake.

Thanks to Kendal Morris for suggesting this question, and to Harry Greene, David Cundall, and Gordon Burghardt for sharing their observations.