the correlation between sleep & intelligence in apes, humans & sasquatch

​According to Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, English scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, sleep is essential to intelligence, memory function, and evolution. Why are we smarter than other primates? It may just have something to do with sleep. REM, or Rapid Eye Movement sleep, is a deep paralysis that occurs during slumber that boosts social complexity and cognitive intelligence. Because primates sleep in trees, they cannot achieve REM sleep, as the sleep paralysis would cause them to fall to their death. Even though primates sleep longer than Homo sapien, they do not reach the depth of cognitive development that we do. While other hominids were sleeping in trees, Homo erectus learned how to make fire, allowing them to sleep safely on the ground and reach REM sleep. This change in sleeping patterns could be what evolved Homo sapien intelligence. Evidence strongly suggests that Sasquatch sleeps on the ground just like us humans. Between credible eye-witness reports, possible ground nesting sites and no evidence of nesting in trees, we can infer that Sasquatch spends their time sleeping on the ground. Primates sleep in trees to avoid predators, which is something Sasquatch doesn’t really need to worry about. Being the largest and most powerful animal in the forest may have caused them to transition from tree-dwelling to bipedalism and ground-sleeping. What does this mean? If modern humans evolved our social complexity and cognitive intelligence through REM sleep, the same might go for Sasquatch! 

​Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep. Scribner, 2017.