Animals Sleeping Time Chart, Average Daily Sleep for 40 Species

Key figures from the chart

• The brown bat sleeps the longest on the chart, at 19 hours 54 minutes a day.
• The giraffe sleeps the least, at 1 hour 54 minutes, just below the African elephant at 2 hours.
• The chart shows 8 hours for a human adult, 16 hours for a human baby and 5 hours 30 minutes for an elderly human.
• Most of the shortest sleepers are large grazing animals: cow, sheep, donkey, horse, both elephants and the giraffe.
• The 40 animals sit in four bands of 5 hours each. The chart prints no source; its figures match Eric Chudler’s Neuroscience for Kids table [1].

Sleeping hours of animals in text

Title: “Average HOURS of Sleep in the Animal Kingdom”. Times are printed in a digital clock style as hours and minutes per day, so 19:54 means 19 hours 54 minutes, or 19.9 hours. The table below lists every animal in the order shown, from most to least sleep. The decimal column is our conversion.

The chart has no legend, footer, source line or logo.

Why some animals sleep so much more than others

The figures on the chart are the same as the table published by neuroscientist Eric Chudler on his Neuroscience for Kids site, which was adapted from published sleep research [1]. In that table, as on the chart, total sleep runs from 19.9 hours for the brown bat to 1.9 hours for the giraffe [1].

A Visual Capitalist summary of research by Savage and West in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that small mammals with fast metabolisms tend to sleep longest, often in many short bouts, and that animals sleeping in protected places such as burrows or tree hollows can sleep for longer [6]. It also reports that large grazers sleep least, partly because grass is not energy dense and they spend much of the day feeding [6]. Both patterns are visible on this chart: bats, opossums and armadillos at the top, and cows, horses, elephants and giraffes at the bottom.

How dolphins sleep with half the brain

The chart gives the bottle-nosed dolphin 10 hours 24 minutes, but dolphins do not sleep the way land mammals do. Arizona State University’s Ask A Biologist explains that dolphins sleep with only half of the brain at a time: recordings show slow wave activity in only one hemisphere at a time [4]. This is called unihemispheric slow wave sleep, can last for up to two hours, and the eye opposite the sleeping hemisphere is closed [4]. The dolphin may swim slowly or float at the surface while it rests [4].

Human sleep on the chart

The chart shows three human figures. For comparison, the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says experts recommend that adults sleep 7 to 9 hours a night, and that babies aged 4 months to 1 year should sleep 12 to 16 hours a day including naps [5]. The chart’s 8 hours for an adult and 16 hours for a baby fall inside those ranges.

Notes on this infographic

• Older figures. The chart matches an older version of Chudler’s table, as archived in January 2017 [1], except for the African elephant. The current version has been revised and now gives, for example, 4.0 hours for the bottle-nosed dolphin, 4.5 hours for the giraffe, 8.4 hours for the rabbit, 5.9 hours for the sheep and 19.4 hours for the North American opossum [2].
• African elephant. The chart’s 2 hours fits a 2017 study that tracked two wild African elephant matriarchs and found an average of 2 hours of sleep a day [3]. The older Chudler table gave 3.3 hours [1]; the current one gives 4 to 5 hours for captive and 2.1 hours for wild African elephants [2].
• Averages. Each figure is a single average. Sleep varies with age, season and whether an animal lives in the wild or in captivity, as the elephant figures show [2] [3].
• Creator. The chart carries no name, logo or source, and we could not identify who made it.

Questions about how long animals sleep

How many hours a day do lions sleep?

The chart gives the lion 13 hours 30 minutes a day, which is 13.5 hours, the same as Chudler’s table [1].

How long do hedgehogs sleep?

The chart shows 10 hours 6 minutes a day, or 10.1 hours. Chudler’s table lists this figure for the European hedgehog [1].

Which animals sleep the least?

On this chart the giraffe sleeps least at 1 hour 54 minutes, followed by the African elephant (2 hours), horse (2 hours 54 minutes) and donkey (3 hours 6 minutes). Note that Chudler’s current table gives the giraffe 4.5 hours [2].

Sources

1. Eric H. Chudler, Neuroscience for Kids, How Much Do Animals Sleep?, University of Washington (archived copy, January 2017).
2. Eric H. Chudler, Neuroscience for Kids, How Much Do Animals Sleep? (current version).
3. Gravett N. et al., Inactivity/sleep in two wild free-roaming African elephant matriarchs, PLoS ONE, 2017.
4. Arizona State University, Ask A Biologist, Sleep in Animals.
5. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, How Much Sleep Is Enough?.
6. Visual Capitalist, The Mammals That Sleep Most and Least.

Last reviewed 29 October 2026