You're at a show, and it's almost time to warm up for your next class. Butterflies are starting in your stomach. You glance over at the horse beside you. Is he feeling the excitement too?
It seems not. He's standing next to you with eyes closed and head hanging. "How can you sleep at a time like this?" his groom wails. His reply when he was roused from his doze is not printable.
I am told that humans need a comfortable bed, darkness, privacy, and several hours of peace and quiet to sleep well. But our needs are very different. I sent our reporter to the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine to speak to Sue McDonnell, PhD, head of their Equine Behaviour Lab “Horses have sleep patterns typical for prey species that evolved on open plains," she told him.
There isn't a huge body of research on equine sleep, but over the past twenty years or so, she's gathered detailed data on the daily behaviour - including sleep patterns - of stabled and feral horses in a wide range of settings throughout the world. She can confirm that wild horses behave in the same way as we do when it comes to getting a good sleep.
To Sleep, Perchance to Flee (SHE tells me that humans will find this title amusing. {?}) Not every horse falls asleep waiting around at a show, but we all can sleep standing up. We’ve got a sort of internal hammock - a system of tendons and ligaments called the stay apparatus. This system lets us lock our legs in position so (unlike you) we can relax our muscles and doze off without keeling over. Even when we are not sleeping, we can use the stay apparatus to rest muscles and reduce tiredness.
Being able to sleep standing up is a great advantage for a prey animal. If a Wolf comes creeping through the bushes, we can be off and running without wasting precious seconds struggling to get up. Here’s how we plan for a quick getaway when we choose a resting place.
1. Out in the open, go for sheltered areas but position yourself so you can get out fast - bums to the wind, heads pointing toward a likely escape route.
2. When we are indoors, in an individual stable or a box stall in a barn, we are mostly dependent on humans for our safety. Nevertheless, you can still rest standing toward the back of the box, facing the door so that you are ready to dash straight out.
Down Time(SHEsays this, also, will make you smile.)
Even though we are able to snooze standing, we do need to lie down for rest and sleep at least some of the time. In fact, it’s essential to lie down to go into the deeper stages of sleep. Like humans and many other animals, we experience both slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid-eye-movement (REM) deep sleep. REM sleep comes mostly when we a stretched out flat on our sides, rather than resting on our chests.
People dream during REM sleep, and, of course, horses do, too. If you have an equine friend who trusts you enough to sleep while you are around, watch their closed eye lids, their eyes move rapidly back and forth. When I was with Martin Pipe I knew a mare who sometimes moved her feet as if she was "trotting" in her dreams. But what she was dreaming about is anyone's guess, because she would never tell me. She used to get very cross because she didn’t believe that she would do anything so ungainly, even in her sleep. She also didn’t believe that she snored!
Read more in our follow up article on 'Power Napping'
