The Big Sleep

Synopsis

Everybody does it differently. Some sleep upside-down for twenty hours a day, like the little brown bat. Elephants and giraffes do it for only two hours a day, and allow themselves to lay down just once every four days. Others such as swallows spend 300 days a year up in the air without ever touching the ground. They simply sleep while flying. This documentary unravels the secrets of the most extreme sleepers of the animal kingdom, as scientists step up the technology game and go wild. Why and how do animals sleep? How do they deal with sleep deprivation? And do animals dream?

These are just a few of the questions that will be answered in the THE BIG SLEEP, as we follow sleep researchers into the heat of the African savannah, the swamps of Australia and the rocky slopes of the Galapagos Islands. They attach microchips, GPS trackers, cameras and perpendicular sensors to elephants, crocodiles and frigate birds and follow their migration routes to unravel their sleeping behaviors and oddities.