Do animals dream?

[snooziums]

When my cat was still alive, he dreamed all of the time. He would sleep on the bed at night (since it was warm), and he would have all kinds of movements when dreaming.

And, just by saying words or phrases he knew, he would respond in dreaming. Like when I gave the command for "opening a can of tuna fish," he would start running in his dream and sniffing around trying to find the can.

Of course there were the times when he was having nightmares, and I would make the mistake of trying to wake him up, only to have him come out of the nightmare thinking that I was the subject of the nightmare, and attack me. By the time he realized it was me and not the subject of his nightmares, my entire arm was clawed and bitten to shreds.

 

[I less than three logic]

thanks but my movie players (real and quicktime) don't seem to want to play .avi files....

Just skimming through the thread and saw your post here. I'm at work right now so I can't check the movie's format, but thought that they may be in DivX. AVI files are sometimes in that format, in which case you would need the DivX codec. It is free on their website.

 

[Zygar]

Of course there were the times when he was having nightmares, and I would make the mistake of trying to wake him up, only to have him come out of the nightmare thinking that I was the subject of the nightmare, and attack me. By the time he realized it was me and not the subject of his nightmares, my entire arm was clawed and bitten to shreds.

Sounds like my ex-wife.

 

[bob_kark]

dick.

Philip

 

[GreedyAlgorithm]

You mean Dick, surely?

no he doesn't.

 

[LibraryLady]

I don't know about dreaming, but I've had three budgies, and they all talk in their sleep. That's why Nick sleeps in another room. They chirp and cluck.

 

[joobz]

no he doesn't.

now you just want to go and hurt people's feelings.

Jeez, I think it's you and Jeff that's giving all of those animals nightmares.

 

[RSLancastr]

I've had both cats and dogs who appeared to dream: making noises, twitching paws, sometimes waking up in the middle of it seeming to be quite confused. I don't think it unreasonable to infer that they were dreaming.

I don't know about dreaming, but I've had three budgies, and they all talk in their sleep. That's why Nick sleeps in another room. They chirp and cluck.

I'm sorry to hear that you and Nick are having troubles in your relationship. I hope you can work it out.

 

[...JR]

could someone address my issue? I was under the assumption that as we dream, our body is paralyzed so that we don't act out our dreams and so any talking/twitching/movement in general comes before and after dreaming. This is what I've been tought here at my university in all my psych/brain and behavior classes. Is this correct or is there movement when we dream but it is of a restricted nature?

 

[SteveGrenard]

could someone address my issue? I was under the assumption that as we dream, our body is paralyzed so that we don't act out our dreams and so any talking/twitching/movement in general comes before and after dreaming. This is what I've been tought here at my university in all my psych/brain and behavior classes. Is this correct or is there movement when we dream but it is of a restricted nature?

Sorry, thought I did above. Yes, during REM and hence dreaming sleep all voluntary muscle action is paralyzed. Involuntary muscle action is not or your heart would stop beating and you would stop breathing as breathing is caused by muscle activity. Twitching and hypnic jerks might could be considered involuntary. There is also an important exception to this called Rem Behavior Disorder where paralysis does not occur and people become physically violent during a dream.

 

[Jeff Corey]

could someone address my issue? I was under the assumption that as we dream, our body is paralyzed so that we don't act out our dreams and so any talking/twitching/movement in general comes before and after dreaming. This is what I've been tought here at my university in all my psych/brain and behavior classes. Is this correct or is there movement when we dream but it is of a restricted nature?

Not all movement, but only stuff like walking involving operant behavior is inhibited, perhaps to avoid danger. Your dog's behavior during REM is more reflexive or respondent. So they can whimper and twitch and, most importantly breathe.
One of my grad profs, Jerry Siegel, used to deprive cats of REM by putting them in a large tub filled with about 10 cm of water. In the tub was a brick the cat could sleep on. When they went into rem, muscle relaxation would result in them falling off the brick into the water, waking them up and depriving them of rem. He also led field trips to a small zoo so students could observe rem in kangaroos and other exotics.
And I see that while I was typing this, it was scooped.

 

[Jeff Corey]

duplicate post.

 

[Foster Zygote]

now you just want to go and hurt people's feelings.

Jeez, I think it's you and Jeff that's giving all of those animals nightmares.

Weirdly enough, I just this evening saw a news story about a special effects guy who had an eerily lifelike articulated head lost by an airline. The subject of the animated sculpture... P. K. Dick. No kidding. I think the headline should be "Dick Head" but hey, that's just me.

Steven

 

[SteveGrenard]

And I see that while I was typing this, it was scooped

But the cat experiment was good!

 

[Jeff Corey]

Weirdly enough, I just this evening saw a news story about a special effects guy who had an eerily lifelike articulated head lost by an airline. The subject of the animated sculpture... P. K. Dick. No kidding. I think the headline should be "Dick Head" but hey, that's just me.

Steven

Dick and cat...

 

[Jeff Corey]

Sacre Merde. Phil Dick looks like he was part Klingon, that would explain it. Like "The intergalactic Fribble Dealer."

 

[Mr. Scott]

Dreams

I wish I could cite a source, but I think it was from an article in Discover Magazine around 1992...According to my memory of the article:

Nearly all mammals dream. It's known because the brain activity signature when we dream is the same when animals dream. In lower mammals it's easier to tell why they dream -- it's to integrate new information about their environment. For example, when a mouse's home is radically rearranged, they dream longer and harder next time they sleep. If prevented from dreaming, they are less likely remember, for example, recent changes to their maze.

One part of the dream signature is intense activity in a particular part of the brain (I'll Google and see if I can find the name). There's one animal, some type of anteater, that doesn't dream and that particular part of his brain is extra-large. When he encounters something new, that part "lights up" as if he went into a quickie dream.

I suspect we evolved dreaming as a way to offload batch processing during the night to conserve resources during the day.

Also, I agree with the suggestion that REM sleep and paralysis, while normally in sync, sometimes fall out of sync. That's why we sometimes act out our dreams, and sometimes can't move when we just wake up.

My dog definitely dreamed. She would actually run while sleeping on her side and make whiney noise. Fascinating, and quite obviously dreaming, and not me anthropomorphizing IMO.

*Googling reveals only the spiny anteater and the dolphin are known to not experience REM sleep. From Brains, Behaviour and Intelligence in Cetaceans:

Dolphin brains are relatively large, but again there are reasons for questioning the assumption that brain size is related to "intelligence". Crick and Mitchison's (1983) theory of the function of dream sleep may provide an alternative explanation for such anomalously large brains. They propose that rapid-eye-movement sleep (REM or dream or paradoxical sleep) acts to remove undesirable interactions in networks of cells in the cerebral cortex. They call this process, which is the opposite of learning, but different from forgetting, "reverse learning". Animals which cannot use this system need another way to avoid overloading the neural network, for example by having bigger brains. The spiny anteater and dolphins are the only mammals so far tested which do not have REM sleep (Allison, Van Twyner and Goff, 1972; Mukhametov, 1984) - and they also have disproportionally large brains. So, following this line of reasoning, dolphins and spiny anteaters would have to have big brains because they cannot dream.

 

[...JR]

Sorry, thought I did above. Yes, during REM and hence dreaming sleep all voluntary muscle action is paralyzed. Involuntary muscle action is not or your heart would stop beating and you would stop breathing as breathing is caused by muscle activity. Twitching and hypnic jerks might could be considered involuntary. There is also an important exception to this called Rem Behavior Disorder where paralysis does not occur and people become physically violent during a dream.

excellent post, i forgot about the autonomic things which must always be working.