14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new scientific investigation by researchers with the Departments of Anthropology at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (UNLV) and the Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington, chimpanzees too prefer a firm and comfortable bed. The primates select trees with biochemical properties that allow for stable and compliant nests, the team established.
In a paper published in the latest online issue of the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE, UNLV expert David R. Samson and IU investigator Kevin D. Hunt found that chimpanzees appeared to prefer making their sleeping nests in a tree called Ugandan ironwood. Around 74 percent of all chimps preferred this tree, although it accounted for less than 10 percent of all trees in the area.
The study was conducted at the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve, in Uganda, where the scientists analyzed 1,844 chimpanzee nests. The most significant conclusion is that the primates prefer “a compliant yet constraining structure [reducing] stress on tissues,” the team writes in their paper, as quoted by NPR.
These findings could have implications beyond figuring out what type of beds chimps prefer. Some biologists argue that comfortable sleep may have been one of the key drivers of human evolution in our planet's distant past. This concept is relatively difficult to prove, but studies conducted on human proxies, such as primates, may provide at least circumstantial evidences to support this claim.