MILES O’BRIEN:
But these killer whales may suggest Dr. Stickgold is all wet.
UCLA psychiatry Professor Jerry Siegel, also a top sleep researcher, began studying them when this fellow, Nakau (ph), was born at SeaWorld in 2001. Siegel's colleagues watched the newborn for weeks and weeks, and he never went to sleep, not a wink.
JERRY SIEGEL, University of California, Los Angeles: The longest any human has ever been awake is 11 to 12 days, and it's a major task for them to stay up for that long, and all sorts of bad things start to happen.
But here you have an animal as part of its normal lifespan being continuously active for a month and, you know, perfectly healthy and growing.
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