If You Need Fewer Than Seven Hours of Sleep Each Night, You're Probably a Mutant

As heard on NPR yesterday:

A team of researchers has found a genetic mutation that appears to allow some people to get by on less sleep than others. The team found the unusual mutation in a mother and daughter pair who appear to sleep less. . . .

"Normal people need eight to eight-and-a-half hours of sleep," says Ying-Hui Fu, a neurologist at the University of California at San Francisco who led the study. By contrast, the two people with the mutation seemed to need just five or six hour's rest each night. The work appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

I get about six hours of sleep each night. My body usually doesn't let me get much more. Does this mean that I'm more highly evolved than most human beings? Perhaps. It may also mean that I would have been eligible to attend Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Children.