Humans take hot showers, wash their sheets, and use soaps, disinfectants, hand sanitizers and all sort of other cleansers to keep themselves free of dirt and germs. And yet, after all that effort, chimps win in the clean bed department, at least when it comes to personal bacteria. Yes, according to a study in Royal Society Open Science, chimps sleep in beds that contain less saliva, skin and fecal bacteria than humans.

From National Geographic:

By swabbing abandoned chimpanzee nests in Tanzania's Issa Valley, scientists learned that just 3.5 percent of the bacteria species present came from the chimps’ own skin, saliva, or feces. In human beds sampled in a previous study in North Carolina, the number was a whopping 35 percent.

These findings might seem illogical – how can beds of over-sterile humans be filled with more bacteria from skin, saliva and feces than those of chimps? The answer turns out to be quite simple – chimps make a new bed every night while most humans sleep in the same sheets night after night, letting all that unsavory bacteria build up.

From Smithsonian:

Humans, on the other hand, tend to sleep on the same sheets night after night, accruing bacteria over time. Then there are our mattresses and pillows, which collect massive amounts of dust mites and dead skin over the years.

Also, while chimps sleep among environmental bacteria from the surrounding forests, humans have more or less eliminated outside bacteria from our sleeping quarters, meaning the stuff that comes from us makes up a bigger percentage of the filth.

Do you co-sleep with your children? Do you have multiple partners? Are you tall? Are you larger than average? Do you have orgies on the regular? Do you like to pretend you're tiny?

Well, whatever your reason, there's now an over-sized mattress for you.

The Ace Collection offers over-sized mattresses (along with corresponding bedding and frames).

The first one is called either the "Ace" or the "Ace Player," depending on how you orient it in your room. One way, the Player side, it's four inches wider than a standard King size bed but is much much longer. Flip it and it becomes an extra-wide bed:

The really crazy big one is the "Ace Family" size. It's massive, measuring in at 144 inches wide. By my calculations, you could easily fit 4-5 adults on that thing.

Mattress prices start at $2,250, bedding at $258, and frames at $500.

Thanks, Dixie! Read the rest

The Cuddle Mattress us made from slices of memory foam, so you can cuddle with your partner without having your limbs fall asleep.

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Want to sleep in Robert A Heinlein's bed? The Heinlein Society was unable to find a museum to take this artifact from his home so they are now selling it on eBay. Apparently designed and built by the writer himself, the bed platform has drawers underneath and two side tables, each with "a drawer, a pull out writing surface, and shelf space, as well as a compartment suitable for a box of tissues, and a trash compartment with a removable container." Robert A Heinlein's Bed (Thanks, Dave Gill!) Read the rest