I was thinking about this the other day while observing how much our cats sleep-- they sleep on average 70% of their lives, so if you take 20 years as a reasonably long cat lifespan, 20 x 30% is only 7 years of consciousness.
So I got to wondering, humans have got to be up there in terms of ‘conscious’ longevity, right? We sleep on average 33% of our lives. Taking 80 years as an average human lifespan, 80 x 33% is just under 53 years. Who beats us in conscious longevity?
The dolphin lives about 60 years, but its sleep cycle is much different than ours- since it has to keep swimming and regularly come up to the surface to breathe, only half of its brain sleeps at any one time– it’s never fully unconscious. So you could say its conscious lifespan is its full 60 years.
Now, I understand that the definition of ‘consciousness’ in creatures other than humans is somewhat ambiguous-- I believe there’s a species of jellyfish that lives for so long it’s practically ‘immortal’. But does it really have what could be considered a ‘consciousness’? So I’m thinking, for the sake of argument, mostly mammals. But if we go with a non-mammalian creature, like say the tortoise, the longest living land animal, its lifespan is 80-150 years and it sleeps on average 12 hours a day. So taking the upper end, 150 years x 50% we’d have 75 years. Is that the winner, if we expand from mammals, but still staying with a creature that could nominally be considered ‘conscious’ when awake?
AIUI lobsters too are essentially immortal, net of predation or accident like getting caught in a hurricane and dashed on the rocks. I’ll also suggest that whatever sort of consciousness they have, it’s a lot more than jellyfish have.
I don’t know whether lobsters have anything equivalent to sleep. But almost regardless of how much they sleep, even 99%, if they can live for centuries they may well win the contest.
Does asleep = not conscious? Maybe it does or maybe it doesn’t. It’s hard to have a decent argument without some definitions first. Also, as the OP noted, the consciousness of non-humans may be so different than the consciousness of humans that we are unable to even imagine what it might be like.
They found that, on average, male European lobsters live to 31 years old, and females to 54. There were a few exceptions: one particularly long-lived female had was found to be 72 years old.
Lobsters certainly do not live forever. It’s not entirely clear where this myth originated, but it is a claim that persists online, often in the form of memes. While some animals, given the right circumstances, could be considered immortal, lobsters are not among them.
One cause of natural death is shell rot, but another is their huge size, as they don’t stop growing. Molting one shell and growing another takes too much energy, and the lobster dies of exhaustion.
Sounds like an unpleasant death. Maybe we’re doing them a favor by eating them.
ETA: Since jellyfish don’t have brains, they don’t have consciousness.
Another related thought (that there have been sci-fi stories and show episodes exploring): are all creatures’ perception of the experience of the speed of traveling through time the same?
Anecdotes abound (and I have my own) of the perception of time slowing down in a moment of crisis. And it does appear to be true for athletes as critical moments approach.
Might some creatures with shorter apparent conscious lives still experience their lives as long as ours? Do dolphins perception of time change when all of their brain is awake?
Impalas rarely sleep, but have a lifespan of only about 15 years. Giraffes also don’t sleep much and live for about 25 years. Humans might sleep about 1/3 of their life but live long enough to out conscious most animals.
Cats “sleep” a great deal, but they’re very aware of their surroundings for most of that time, so I’m not sure you should rule out “consciousness” during all those hours. They still don’t win, though, because of their criminally short lifespans.
Thank you. That’s anther well-known “fact” to forget. Sorry I added a smidgen of online corroboration to bunk.
Sounds a lot like humans dying of old age, and especially obese humans. Our energy-generating systems get feeble faster than our energy demands decline. Eventually just sitting is too tiring.
If we want an animal that almost certainly has qualitatively similar consciousness to humans (mammals, highly intelligent, highly social), elephants live 60-70 years and only sleep a couple of hours a day. They need to spend most of their time eating.
Incidentally, if we narrow the question to “which human in history has experienced the longest period of consciousness among all humans?” the answer might, ironically, be Keith Richards.
Ironic since he’s the poster child for profligate drug use. But, according to Richards in his autobiography, he didn’t use drugs for recreational purposes, but only to accomplish what he wanted to get done-- using drugs like ‘gears’, speeding him up or slowing him down as needed. In one anecdote, he was busy mixing (I think) the ‘Exile On Main Street’ album while they all stayed in a rented mansion. For 9 straight days he used drugs to keep him awake and focused while he worked, as others partied and crashed around him and the sun came and went. Finally, on the ninth day his system couldn’t take it any more, and he passed out flat on his face.
A quote from the article below:
In his “Life” autobiography, Richards reckons that on average, he slept only two nights a week for many years of the Stones’ glory years. “This means that I have been conscious for at least three lifetimes,” he calculated.
Well, for the purpose of the OP question, I’m not looking for a hard philosophical meta-definition of what ‘consciousness’ entails.
I’m more looking for “what animal experiences the world in its ‘awake’ state for the longest time?”. That should open things up to all but the lowest orders of animals that have such a primitive nervous system that one can’t really say when or whether they are ever awake or asleep; such as the aforementioned jellyfish.
Greenland sharks: A study in 2016 determined the oldest shark in their sample to be 392 +/-120 years old. I believe sharks don’t really sleep due to their need swim constantly to push water through their gills. This is probably going to be the winner.
Bowhead whales: Considered to be the longest-lived mammals with a lifespan over 200 years. Dunno about their sleeping habits.
Various giant tortoise species live over 150 years, with some verified ages approaching 200 years. They apparently sleep about 16 hours a day, though, which is going to bring the awake time down to 60-70 years.
Yep, I thought sharks might win the non-mammal category. Apparently they do have reasonably well-developed nervous systems / brains, so I’m fine with considering them ‘awake’ and / or ‘conscious’ enough for the purpose of the OP.
This looks like a winner for mammals as well. I don’t know about Bowhead whales specifically, but it seems many to most whale species, like their cousin the dolphin, also do a hemispheric sleep cycle, so they are never fully unconscious, and therefore their full lifespan can be counted ‘awake’.
(from the article @solost quoted)
I dunno how he calculated that. Normal humans spend about a third of our time asleep, so a human who lived for an entire lifespan without any sleep at all would still only have 1.5 lifespan-equivalents.
Huh, I guess my information was outdated. I’ve long known the “fact” that humans are the longest-lived mammals, with elephants in second place.
I wonder how Asimov’s old factoid that all mammals except humans have a maximum lifespan of a billion heartbeats holds up?