Attack Bunny?

Sleepy Rabbits

So one of my recent pastimes has been searching YouTube for videos of cute animals sleeping or being sleepy. Call it a habit. They’re cute; what can I say?

This one’s been around for awhile, but it’s cute as can be – a wild rabbit in someone’s backyard, having a snack after a long nap.

This little guy looks surprisingly fierce for a few seconds – a.k.a. the bunny with “huge pointy teeth” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

(Warning: this one’s a bit graphic and disturbing in classing Monty Python freaky-British-comedy style…)

But the bunny in my new favorite clip is just stretching and yawning after a nap – nothing disturbing here … or is there :)?

The Importance of a Nap

Cute bunny or not, the value of a nap can’t be overstated. Research conducted by the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurosciences and Sleep at the City College of the City University of New York explored the impact of sleep on memory.

The researchers found that subjects who napped “demonstrated enhanced performance” on tests designed to measure the performance of declarative memory – a particular part of human long-term memory that deals with memories that can be consciously recalled, like particular facts or learned knowledge.

In addition, research published in the journal Psychophysiology back in the 80s found that resting and napping both improved subjects’ afternoon moods significantly – whether the subjects were habitual nappers or not. A little afternoon downtime may help us all to be less grumpy… that bunny was even less likely to be in attack mode after a good nap.

So have a nap and reap the benefits for learning and mood. Have a nap, or just a short rest at your desk, and short-circuit that desire to go all attack bunny on your co-workers!

Have you ever seen a rabbit do this? Were you worried ;)?

Author Bio: +Michelle Gordon is a sleep expert who researches and writes about sleep and health, and is an online publisher for the latex mattress specialist Latexmattress.org