What do animals dream about?

a post from Bea

We haven’t posted much about animals lately, so I asked Bea to research something we’ve been wondering about… whether animals dream, and what the heck they dream about. Take it away, Bea!

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Do you remember your dreams? I usually do. Once I had this crazy, crazy dream where all my teachers were Bob’s Burgers characters and everything was really weird and all the kids were running around the school doing whatever they liked. I jumped in a bucket of pool balls in P.E., and a bucket of paint in art…

Dreams happen for humans during REM sleep, about an hour or two after we fall asleep. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, which is when your eyes start darting around rapidly behind your closed eyelids. During this time your brain is active, like you’re awake, and your heart rate gets faster. Most humans dream about three to six times a night, even if we don’t always remember our dreams. Scientists think babies and younger kids dream more than older kids and adults, in part because they sleep more and have more REM sleep.

By studying brain waves, scientists have learned that mammals, birds, and even reptiles enter REM sleep too—and probably, during that time, these animals are dreaming. Smaller dogs have more frequent dreams than big dogs, and younger mammals (like younger humans) tend to have more REM sleep, and more dreams.

The discovery of reptile dreams was especially cool because it means that dreams evolved a long, long time ago—maybe more than 300 million years ago!

Cats definitely dream—we have two indoor-outdoor cats (Julius and Coco), and an outside visitor cat (Randy), and I’ve watched them sleep a lot. Sometimes they sleep very still, but other times I’ll hear a satisfied little meow from Julius and I know he’s dreaming, probably about an exciting squirrel chase. Maybe he’s going into the rain forest and discovering a new species of squirrel, the only one of its kind… and eating it.

Actually, Julius would not be dreaming about the rain forest because he’s never been there and presumably doesn’t know about it. But he just might be dreaming about a squirrel. He’s had a lot of experience with squirrels, and scientists believe that that mammals like cats and dogs dream about their day to day lives as a way of learning and reinforcing things that worked and didn’t work. Part of Julius’s day to day (or night to night) life is hunting.

Scientists also think that, like us, animals use dreams to become more creative. Zebra finches repeat songs during their sleep and will also make up new songs—all in their minds. They change the refrains and verses, and speed up or slow down the tempo.

But nothing is cooler or more mysterious than octopus sleep! Check out this video of an octopus having what must be a really cool dream:

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A few more things:

The final total for our DIY Support Our Students Fundraiser was $15,131! That’s more than we earned last year during Boosterthon, and without all those plastic prizes! All students earned the chance to silkscreen a T-shirt designed by the art classes. We’ll post next weekend about making the T-shirt screens. Thank you so, so much for all of your contributions to Bea and Harriet’s school!

Did you see this article about the Octonauts’ episodes about climate change in the New York Times? (The article mentions that the show doesn’t disclose why the Earth is warming.) We’re longtime Octonauts fans, but I thought it was interesting that the writer didn’t look at Molly of Denali, which is (in my opinion) a much more interesting and useful look at the impact of climate change on kids’ lives and homes.

For all you weekday vegetarians, here is a favorite, easy chickpea recipe we love in the fall.

And finally, here’s a joke from Richard:

Q: What did the cow say to her calf?

A: It’s pasture bedtime.

Happy weekend, Frog Troublers! We wish you all great dreams and comfy sleeping spots!