On: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

[jvanderbot]

I don't think they meant "Modern" sleep. I think they meant "Only brief periods of highly energetic activity before returning to the usual activities were precursors to our modern consciousness/wakefulness"

[jjk166 → jvanderbot]

That is also what I am referring to. Energetic activity is required to live and to reproduce, those are the normal activities. An active creature may have evolved a state of dormancy for various reasons, but there was never an organism in a state of pure dormancy.

[chaps → jjk166]

A seed?

[jjk166 → chaps]

If a seed doesn't stop being a seed, it has no descendants.

[chaps → jjk166]

Sure, but probalistically some will! So if 99.9% don't lose their dormancy state, that small percent will carry the organism's lineage on. Obviously I'm generalizing, but I think my original point stands!

[jldugger → jjk166]

Do sponges sleep?

[jjk166 → jldugger]

They certainly aren't exclusively inactive, which is all that matters for this discussion.

[throwawayffffas → jldugger]

Presumably. Some jellyfish sleep[1]

But do fungi and Archea sleep?

My guess based on what we read is yes and no.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/if-alive-sleeps-brai...

[jldugger → throwawayffffas]

Yea, but at some point this is probably gonna strain the colloquial definition of sleep. So I went for one of the oldest and perhaps simplest animals around, to examine the "creature" angle in extrema.

[rkomorn → throwawayffffas]

Of course fungi sleep. That's how we can catch them in order to eat them.

[heavyset_go → jjk166]

Sleep isn't pure dormancy, though. Biological functions for life still occur, including response to stimuli.

[jjk166 → heavyset_go]

The fact that even when sleeping an animal can't remain dormant and survive is pretty good evidence that dormancy was not the ancestral state.