- Animals
- Reference
Animals dream too—here's what we know
Rats practice running through mazes, cats envision future hunts in their heads—scientists are learning more than ever before about animal dreamers.
If you’ve ever watched a dog nap, you’ve probably wondered if animals dream.
It’s a complicated question. We still don’t know exactly why humans dream, or why dreams might be important. Studying animal dreams is even harder; dogs can’t tell us what made them whine or run during a snooze.
Depending on how one defines them, animal dreams could have intriguing implications. (Read more about the secrets of sleep.)
“I think dreaming gives us a way of extending a number of cognitive capacities to animals; that includes things like emotion, memory, and even imagination,” says David M. Peña-Guzmán, who studies the
