Get your own Free home PageGargoyles do not sleep in the usual fashion, rather they hibernate by turning to stone. About this we have three facts, firmly established because they come from the show's creator, Greg Weisman:
Plus observations from the show itself.
#1 means that hibernation is throughly integrated into the gargoyle life-cycle, gargoyles will not begin to hibernate until after they've hatched, and are strong enough to break out of the thin layer of stone left when they wake up. (Sevarius probably exploited this when cloning gargoyles, suppressing the hibernation would approximately double their growth rate, and eliminate a number of problems keeping them suspended in the tubes.
#2 means that sunrise and sunset do not directly trigger the hibernation process, rather they synchronize the biological clock. If a gargoyle is insulated from the sun, say by being underground, or under dense cloud cover, hibernation will still occur, but could be late by several minutes. Likewise hibernation will end, but not precisely at sunset.
Examples of this occur in the series. In The Silver Falcon, Broadway, despite being buried in rubble in a basement, when into hibernation approximately at sunrise, and woke up approximately at sunset. In Long Way to Morning, Demona, Hudson, and Goliath were under dense cloud cover and did not go into hibernation until a break in the clouds revealed the sun.
#3 means that all the spell that held the survivors had to do, was keep them asleep. The Mayan amulets in The Green only had to prevent them from going to sleep (long-term, this should cause problems, humans and other animals have a demonstrable need to dream, not to mention the rest and healing aspects of hibernation).
Human also have diurnal clocks, synchronized by the light/dark periods of the day. Studies show that our clocks, unsynchronized by day/night, tend to run at an approximate cycle of twenty-five hours. It's likely that gargoyles would also settle on some period.
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