That dolphins sleep with one eye open?

Mos def!

When we think of those who sleep with one eye open, a couple of characteristics come to mind:
• Suspicious
• Insane
• Panicked
• Sleep-deprived
• Medically sick – “This symptom [eye-open sleeping]…should prompt a search for an underlying neurological problem, namely bilateral facial weakness. One of the more common causes of such a problem, particularly if it has gone unnoticed by the individual, is a form of muscular dystrophy called facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy.”*

Well, to my knowledge, dolphins don’t generally posses any of the preceding characters. In fact, if I were to characterize dolphins, I might call them:
• Cute
• Nice
• Adorable
• Friendly
• Nice
• Cute
• Uber Friendly
• Super Adorable

I would never even consider characterizing them in any similarly to the open-eye sleepers (aside from being suspiciously awesome, insanely legit, or sick how cool and nice dolphins are).

So when considering the gaping disparity between open eye sleepers and dolphin cuteness, we are presented with a weird divergence. Dolphin’s are crazy delightful while in their waking hours, and oddly neurotic during their sleeping hours.

Edgar Allen Poe had some thoughts about open eye sleepers, most famously occurring in his short story, The Tell Tale Heart. In this story, the narrator finds his roommate sleeping with one eye open. Check it out:

“I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then when my head was well in the room I undid the lantern cautiously -- oh, so cautiously -- cautiously (for the hinges creaked), I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.”

After doing this for seven nights, the narrator decides that such open eye sleeping is such a problem so as to merit a murder.

Does this mean, then, that if such a narrator were to see a dolphin sleeping with one eye open, and his lantern were to shed light in the dolphin in just the wrong way, would he murder this dolphin? We'll never know I suppose.

* http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Neurology/Sleeping-with-Eyes-Open/show/897018?forums=forums