Hungarian researchers studied the sleep of wolves for the first time

For the first time in the world, researchers from the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have investigated the sleep of wolves using non-invasive EEG – the Faculty of Science at ELTE told MTI on Tuesday.

After a number of successful sleep tests on dogs, the researchers also tried the non-invasive sleep EEG method, which has already been proven in the case of family pets, on hand-reared wolves. The advertisement stated that during a harmless procedure, similar to sleep tests performed on humans, electrodes were attached to the surface of the skin.

According to the report

The increased interest in dog sleep stems from the ability to study the sleep of species that are highly adapted to the human environment.

This is important because evolutionary adaptation to environmental conditions — for example, sleeping in a sheltered space — can transform people’s sleep, so similar changes can be assumed to have occurred in other species that have adapted to the human environment. It is already known, for example, that dogs, like humans, sleep more superficially in a strange location.

The researchers have now studied the sleep characteristics of wolves living in a human environment in order to better understand the effects of domestication and coexistence with humans on dogs’ sleep. Their results have been published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

“Comparative studies of dogs and wolves have yielded many exciting results in behavioral research and genetics. However, no one has yet studied the neurological processes of wolves.”

Explained in the advertisement Anna Balint He is a member of the MTA-ELTE Comparative Behavioral Sciences Research Group.

“We successfully recorded the sleep EEG of seven intensively socialized hand-reared wolves. Using the method used for family dogs, measuring wolves sleeping at an unknown location, we were also able to monitor all sleep phases observable in dogs (sleep, NREM and REM sleep). ) adds the researcher.

According to the report, hand-raised wolves, used to humans from a young age and raised in a family, can easily be coaxed to undergo such tests with praise, petting and petting. During the sleep test, the animals were only surrounded by people known to the wolves, whom they trusted, and if the wolf became agitated or woke up during the experiment, the breeder and tester tried to get him to rest again with praise and petting.

“The seven wolves examined are not yet a large enough sample for statistical analyses, so the results are descriptive.

Comparing the sleep of wolves with data for dogs of the same age, slight differences in the measured parameters are visible.

The time spent falling asleep and the NREM sleep phase was similar for the two species, but the young wolves spent more time in REM sleep than the young dogs. Reicher Vivian, The first author of the research is a PhD student in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at ELTE. “This is particularly interesting because the amount of REM sleep is associated with a number of different effects, including stress, domestication, and memory consolidation,” he adds.

He notes, “Although the current study is only the first step in a comprehensive comparison of the two species, we believe our results revealed an exciting possibility.” Marta JacksyProject Leader, and Senior Scientific Associate of the MTA-ELTE Comparative Behavioral Sciences Research Group.

“Because it is inherently difficult to collect a sufficient amount of data on wolves, we suggested that using a completely reliable and non-invasive methodology that we developed could form the basis for multisite international data collection that could be used to examine the sleep of several (unrelated) wolves, and based on the data series Combined, it is indeed possible to draw generalizable scientific conclusions,” says the researcher.