u/BlueKingfisher3

Not a joke question.

I wrote a hypothesis paper about this and I can't find evidence it's ever been attempted. Dolphins can't fully sleep the way we do because they're voluntary breathers. So they evolved unihemispheric sleep, one hemisphere at a time, while the other keeps them surfacing. It works, but it means they may never fully rest, and whether they experience anything like REM sleep is genuinely unresolved in the literature.

My question is: what if the reason they can't achieve deeper rest isn't neurological, it's mechanical? Maintaining position at the surface requires constant muscular effort. A purpose-built apparatus that held them neutrally buoyant at the surface with blowhole access might remove that constraint entirely.

Northern fur seals switch between unihemispheric and bilateral sleep depending on whether they're in water or on land. The same brain, two different sleep modes, depending on environment. What if dolphins still have the neurological capacity for bilateral sleep. It just may never have had the right conditions to express it.

Would a dolphin use a bed if you gave it one? And if it did, what would its brain do?

I wrote this up as a formal hypothesis paper if anyone wants to dig into the citations and methodology. Curious whether anyone here knows of existing research I missed, or has thoughts on whether this is worth pursuing.

I've had a recurring leak on the left side of my wafer for a while and could never figure out why. Gravity should push output downward, my application technique is consistent, and the right side never has issues. It made no sense. Then I noticed I have a small divot in my skin on the left side of my stoma. My theory is that it's not just a sealing problem, it's a pressure problem. The divot creates a small channel or tube-like space under the wafer, and every time I breathe my stomach moves in and out, acting like a bellows. On the inhale, that little tube generates suction and actively pulls output under the wafer edge. Like a straw effect driven by breathing. This would explain why standard fixes like paste and barrier rings only partially help -- they're solving for static seal failure, but this is dynamic pressure-driven failure. Different problem, different solution. I haven't found anything addressing this specific mechanism online or heard it come up with my ostomy nurse. Wondering if anyone else with unexplained one-sided leaking has a similar divot or skin contour situation, and whether you've found anything that actually works.