Sleepiest animal

[bluedog]

What is the world's sleepiest animal? some say the Sloth and others say the Hedgehog. Can onyone help please?

[gracey62]

i think the sloth

[gen2]

No, It cannot be the sloth because there are many animals that hibernate/sleep for months at a time and the sloth does not hibernate.  There are also animals that aestivate/sleep through the hot dry seasons.  I think some species of fishes, amphibians and crustaceans are able to go for over a year if the rains fail.  I have no idea what the record is.

[gen2]

Here are a few facts from Encarta:

Some of the world's champion hibernators are also among the smallest. Nearly microscopic brine shrimp, for instance, can remain in an encysted (egglike) state for a decade. The Arctic woolly bear, a caterpillar native to Greenland, spends so much of its life in seasonal suspension that it takes 12 years to mature into a winged adult moth. And in one documented case, a set of Mexican desert snails lay dormant in the desk drawer of a researcher in San Francisco. One day, six years later, when the humidity reached a record level, the snails became reactivated and slowly shuffled away.

[gazzawazza]

If you're talking about just normal sleep and not hibernation then I would throw lions into the pot.  I saw a documentary which stated that male lions sleep 20 hours every day, waking only to feed and mate.

What a life!!!

[gen2]

I thought bluedog was including hibernation in this thread since he included the hedgehog in his question

[gazzawazza]

My mistake gen2, I hadn't noticed that.

[long john]

No  my misses dosn't awake each day till around 2pm. Is this sleeping or is she just lazy.

[puckhead@tem]

Actually, the Koala is the sleepiest animal.  It sleeps 22 hours a day.  The sloth is 2nd at 20 hours a day.