Why don't we fall out of the bed as adults?

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Martipar@reddit

I have definitely fallen out of bed as an adult.

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SeventySealsInASuit@reddit

I can and have slept on tree branches which were around way before beds of any kind so I can definitely see some evolutionary uses.

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JohnnySchoolman@reddit

Your ancestors used to sleep in tree branches.

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outlawsmokeyscottish@reddit

Oh well do. We just have bigger beds. Single person bad dream your in the middle of a double bed. Got a partner they wake you enough to ask if your okay then cuddle in.

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hotchillieater@reddit

What about single people in single beds

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outlawsmokeyscottish@reddit

Adults in single beds tend to be in jobs in shifts so crash out harder. Like I'm sure it happens but adults don't tend to do single beds.

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outlawsmokeyscottish@reddit

Being a big whore I don't know a single adult who sleeps in a single bed. Unless they at their work.

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hotchillieater@reddit

Nice, what kind? Do you know what you'll do with them?

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outlawsmokeyscottish@reddit

My prize one is a scotch bonnet for canny find them in no shop about here, got the Cheyenne aswell and banana then Kenyan green fingers.

I've two tomato plants growing. And depends when they fruit if it's still BBQ season burgers if no one of my slow cooker curries and please don't ask me for a recipe for I just followed the mans advice in what to I refer as mopatops (you want it he's got it) shop for he's a post office to a spice shop he gave me the ratios of what spices to use but my friends call it Mordor curry for it's hot hot. But because it's all made from scratch it's full of flavour so you can't help but come back for more lol.

That said that said I'm highly considering of the purchasing of a blender and making a sauce. For all the hot sauces you get are either tiny wee bottles or big bottles of wheres the the fire.

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outlawsmokeyscottish@reddit

Never once have I had we need to yours I've only a single bed.

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Proof_Drag_2801@reddit

Children and adolescents roll around more when they sleep.

Less rolling, less falling.

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glasgowgeg@reddit

They typically have smaller beds too.

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Nobody4993@reddit

Who’s we?

My dumb ass has rolled out of the bed plenty at the age of 33 😂

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ClarinetCadenza@reddit

Did you fall out of a bed as a child to learn it?

In all seriousness, early humans would have slept in trees if there was a suitable one available. So I don’t think sleeping in a raised position is that new of an evolutionary adaptation

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Silent_Ideal_World@reddit

I constantly fall off my bed, always have. Even my cat does XD

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hdhxuxufxufufiffif@reddit

is this a relatively new evolutionary adaptation seeing as raised beds haven't always been used

I think you've got this backwards; we can sleep in raised beds because we've already evolved not to roll off a cliff or out of a tree or whatever. Is there any animal that rolls around willy-nilly when sleeping? I've never seen eg a sleeping cat roll off a chair.

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Certain-Donut-9175@reddit

My cats rolls out of their beds fairly frequently while asleep (they are mounted on the wall). We get woken by the "thump and squeal" I think they skipped this evolutionary lesson. 😂

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Mrslinkydragon@reddit

One of my cats sometimes sleeps on the banister of the stairs, he sometimes falls off!

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KaidaShade@reddit

I have, though it's usually if they fall asleep on your lap and then just... Slide off because your legs aren't completely flat

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CobaltBlue389@reddit (OP)

Interesting. My backwards view imagined our ancestors slept on floors in animal furs or in hammocks, negating the need for (what i've since been informed) is propriocpeption

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hdhxuxufxufufiffif@reddit

Ok but we wouldn't lose those genes just because we don't need them. Your body doesn't think "we've got hammocks now, deactivate the proprioception gene".

You pass on genes, useful or otherwise, if you can survive to adulthood and have a child. There's no teleology to it, our bodies aren't actively trying to evolve into the perfect human.

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CobaltBlue389@reddit (OP)

Yeah but my thought was that instead of turning it off, we'd never have developed said gene due to it not being evolutionarily beneficial. Ive been humbled by my own simplicity.

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LittleSadRufus@reddit

Modern humans have been around 200,000 years and the earliest known intentional beds were just piles of leaves with anti-insect properties gathered in a sheltered spot, from around the same time period. No designed beds have been found for earlier hominids, but presumably we were like the other apes and gathered leaves and twigs to sleep on the ground or in trees.

The first raised beds were about 80,000 years ago, just packed leaves and grasses to make a platform. Wooden beds arrived about 5,000 years ago and stuffed mattresses around 3,000. All of these developments are too recent to have impacted our evolution significantly.

Hammocks were invented in the new world around 4,000 years ago so never had any real impact on UK evolution, as Europeans have only known about them for 500 years.

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Delicious_Shop9037@reddit

Yeah so back even further in time, our ancestors would have been ape like and slept in trees and such places

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buy_me_a_pint@reddit

I fell out of bed once on holiday in France I must have rolled over during the night

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thecatisincharge@reddit

I do 😂 quite regularly, most of the time I manage to wake up enough as I’m falling to stop myself, last time I fell directly into my bedside cabinet. I need some kind of bed guard 😳

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danddersson@reddit

I imagine falling out of a tree would have been sub-optimal back in our evolutionary history.

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Pedantichrist@reddit

We do.

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Sleepyllama23@reddit

I fell out of bed the other week. I leaned across my sleeping husband to turn his light off and when I flipped back over to my side I somehow went too far and ended up in a heap on the floor. First time since I was a kid though!

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V65Pilot@reddit

Does rolling out of bed count....because that's me, pretty much every morning.

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Gwenfrewy@reddit

I've also dislocated by shoulder by falling out of bed as an adult. People have mentioned children are not as aware and move around more. I think that's right. Children seem to be much deeper sleepers on average. E.g. as a child I would fall asleep in the car and my dad would carry me inside and put me to bed and I'd be dead to the world. As an adult I partially wake up when I roll over.

There is probably an evolutionary reason. Others have mentioned not falling out of trees etc but the awareness thing too. In a social animal the young will be among a group including numerous adults and so can sleep soundly and protected. The adults in the group however need to maintain some level of awareness for predators since they are the protectors.

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International-Wear57@reddit

I fell out of bed yesterday.

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Lopsided_Snower@reddit

was alcohol involved?

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Xenozip3371Alpha@reddit

I thought I fell out of bed, turns out my brain was just being a dick and tricking me into thinking I was falling.

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cold_tap_hot_brew@reddit

God, that’s such a hypnic jerk move.

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saludpesetasamor@reddit

I still do sometimes. Usually in hotel rooms though - it’s as if my body panics because the bed is bigger or smaller than the one it’s used to, so it does some experimental flailing while I sleep and I end up on the floor, bruised and confused.

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CobaltBlue389@reddit (OP)

Awww thats actually quite sad. Maybe sleep on the gap between the double and the single?!

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saludpesetasamor@reddit

It doesn’t happen often, just enough that I’ll wake up and say, “Damn it, not again!” and climb back in. I did give myself a black eye once because I bashed into the bedside table on the way down, so check-out was a bit awkward.

I sleep better in hotels than I do at home for some reason though, so I usually have an uneventful stay. Except sometimes. 😆

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Sparklykazoo@reddit

My husband fell out of bed about a year ago. He was very put out by the fact that I didn't wake up.

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Competitive-Fact-820@reddit

Oh but we do.

I sprained my thumb about 5 years ago when I last fell out of bed and that thing hurt for months.

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Griffrose@reddit

Because your brain stays somewhat alert at all times to things like proprioception even when we sleep. When you’re experiencing REM sleep you have very little movement in your muscles.

Unless we are impaired by drugs or alcohol your brain should be alert enough to not fall out of bed, because, ouch! We kind of have an internal map of our familiar areas so sometimes if you’re sleeping in a different bed to usual you might roll out.

Proprioception develops more as you get older that’s why toddlers are clumsy and often misjudge movement skills and distance.

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Actual-Ad9856@reddit

Unless you’re my husband and you like to act out your dreams more than you should… sometimes I wake him up to ask what he’s dreaming about (and because having someone twitching and moving around is not great for sleep) best one was trying to play foot ball 🤦🏻‍♀️ or when he dreamt one of our kids was falling over so he leapt to stop her- and subsequently leapt out out of bed and landed on the floor. Yes he’s a bit special…

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Upset-Elderberry3723@reddit

When I was at my worst in terms of schizophrenia, my hallucinations were bleeding into my dreams. I would have dreams in which I was experiencing the same psychosis as when I was awake, and inanimate objects would whisper to me and taunt me. All of them started with me waking up, only to eventually realise that I was still asleep.

On one occasion, I became aware that there was some kind of inky demon under my bed, that I could somehow see very clearly. It had a gravitational pull, and was towing me closer to the edge of the bed and pulling me down to my doom. Meanwhile, the wall directly behind my head was whispering to me and insulting me.

When I woke up a moment or so later, I was half off of the bed, using my left leg to push back against the floor and prevent myself from falling. It was difficult to go back to sleep afterwards, and I had to check under the bed.

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No-Jicama-6523@reddit

I have! TBH, I don't remember doing it as a child, I presume it happened occasionally, just as it does now.

I guess that our bodies recognise things like a hand over the edge even at night. Or we have an inclination to return to the same place. If you sleep on the floor you don't end up the other side of the room.

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Certain-Donut-9175@reddit

Proprioception. Body awareness and positioning. Kids brains are still learning and maturing. An adult subconsciously knows through proprioception where they are on the bed even when asleep and your brain will adjust you if you get too close to the edge (unless your brain is impaired by something like drugs, alcohol, illness etc). Kids don't have a fully developed brain and can't do this as well. Its why toddlers are 'clumsy'. They haven't yet 'learned' how much force is needed to lift something, hold something, draw a picture without tearing the paper, etc etc.

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2MB26@reddit

and when they do learn a growth spurt changes it all again!

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MolassesInevitable53@reddit

This was asked yesterday.

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Chegwarn@reddit

What’s this ‘we’ malarkey? Don’t shoe-horn me in with your kin, ‘Bed-magnet’!

Some of us take the time to fill the floor space surrounding our beds with play-pit balls and various cushions as to… Y’know? Get onboard with 21st century living? Try it sometime, mattress maestro…

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3507341C@reddit

I've fallen out of bed four times since early March. Before that I'd managed to not fall out for like 60+ years. I've always been an edge of the bed guy probably dating back to when one or more of my little ones would sneak in between my wife and I. It's been a couple of weeks since I last fell out and I'm pretty sure that's due to me now becoming used to an SSRI medication I started in March. If it happens again I will speak to the doctor just in case it's a symptom of some freaky old age degenerative thing.

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CobaltBlue389@reddit (OP)

Dr "if you can just lie on that bed, ill do a few checks..." cue you just clattering off the side 😆

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3507341C@reddit

If I hear the snap of rubber gloves I'm off that bed faster than a fast thing.

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Ok-Doubt-6324@reddit

I still fall out of bed sometimes. Copious amounts of alcohol is usually involved though.

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vicarofsorrows@reddit

Not fallen out for years… but I’ll never take the top bunk if offered a choice.

Just don’t trust myself.

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wardyms@reddit

You can definitely google this.

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CobaltBlue389@reddit (OP)

True, but don't get the same social, authentic feedback. But thanks.

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wardyms@reddit

There’s no social feedback. It’s a scientific answer.

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oraff_e@reddit

It's inherent to our psychology to ask questions. Even with all of the technology available to research a topic ourselves, it's still far more enjoyable to learn from another human, because there are actually two levels to it.

The first level is the pure data: "This is a fact I am teaching you. Here is another." The second level, social-emotional, is what helps our brains process information while learning - dopamine and endorphins (which the brain creates when we connect with someone) enhance cognitive processing.

So yeah... you can say "just Google it", but so long as there are two humans still alive on this planet, there will be a teacher and a student.

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hotchillieater@reddit

Well, there is, though, because apparently some people do fall out of bed

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RecentTwo544@reddit

Stick around, you'll find out what makes Reddit so good. Not being sarcastic - there's a reason that when you get rid of the almost-always-wrong "AI" answer from Google, a Reddit thread is often one of the first results.

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No_Release2180@reddit

Have you ever looked in on a kid between the ages of 3 and 10 sleeping? They're always in some wild position. They wriggle about a lot and don't have the spacial awareness yet to adjust themselves.

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sharia1919@reddit

From what I know playing computer games about early hominids, then it was an advantage to sleep in trees on big branches.

If you fell, you got eaten by tigers and whatnot.

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CobaltBlue389@reddit (OP)

Hammocks surely negated our need for proprioception?

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sharia1919@reddit

Those apes you play in Ancestors Humankind odyssey does not know how to make hammocks.

Besides, that sort of hereditary genetic stuff doesn't really disappear overnight. Once stuff is in the genes somehow, then it doesn't leave the genes unless it is an active disadvantage. (Meaning you only lose specific genes if the people without the genes have better survival and procreation rates)

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Defiant-Tackle-0728@reddit

Some of us still struggle to not fall out of bed.

I dislocated my shoulder for the third time falling less than a foot (i have a low rise bed) last year.

I do have night terrors, PTSD and Ehlers Danlos which dont help.matters.

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Lollygagger105@reddit

One time I did was because I’d taken some perfectly legal substances but they made me believe the room was on a slope and I just kept rolling out of bed… I still laugh about it. The most recent was when I was in a hotel room that had two single beds but I pushed them together because at home I have a super king size. Oh, the lolz when I fell into the gap between them and was wedged for a while as the beds slipped apart…

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Xenozip3371Alpha@reddit

Don't sleep on the edge of the bed.

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TheRealVinosity@reddit

I did a few years ago; and dislocated my shoulder.

To be fair, it was a single bed in a hotel room, and I am used to sleeping in a double.

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