Sleep Patterns of Aging Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Diurnal primates spend around half of their lifetime sleeping or inactive. These nocturnal behaviors are considerably understudied compared to daytime activities. While it is well established that sleep quality diminishes with age in humans, little is known about the effects of advanced age on sleep in our closest primate relatives. We aimed to describe captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) sleep patterns and examine whether individual sleep quality changed over an 11-yr period. We recorded the individual night rooms of 12 chimpanzees for six nights using infrared video cameras and analyzed 72 nights (936 h) of video. To evaluate long-term changes, we compared our data from 2018-2019 with previously published data from 2007-2008 on the same individuals living under the same conditions. We used complete inactivity and a head-down, lying posture as a proxy measurement for sleep. Each night individuals slept a mean of 10.5 (+/- SD 1.8) h and woke up 15.1 (+/- 3.6) times. The mean duration of sleep bouts was 45.4 (+/- 16.8) and the mean duration of awake bouts was 10.2 (+/- 8.2) min. We found that as chimpanzees aged they experienced significantly more frequent awakenings and shorter sleep bouts (i.e., more fragmented sleep), but nightly sleep duration and the length of awake bouts did not differ significantly between the two study periods. Our results suggest that chimpanzees experience some changes in sleep with age similar to those in humans and other animals.

Automated summary

The study revealed that as chimpanzees age, they experience more frequent awakenings and shorter sleep bouts, resulting in more fragmented sleep. However, nightly sleep duration and the length of awake bouts did not differ significantly between different study periods.