Humans need less sleep

The San hunter-gatherers of Namibia have no electric lights or new Netflix releases that keep them awake. Yet, they don't sleep more than the typical Western city-dweller who stays up doom-scrolling on their smartphone.

• Research shows that people in non-industrial societies average less than seven hours a night.
• Chimps sleep around 9.5 hours out of 24. Three-striped night monkeys sleep for 17 hours a day. 

The various ways that human sleep is unusual. We spend fewer hours asleep than our nearest relatives, and more of our night sleep is spent in the rapid eye movement or REM phase.