Wednesday, December 12, 2012

do animals dream: of course they do



psychologytoday | From time to time people ask me if nonhuman animals (animals) dream. Just this morning I received an email from Canada's Discovery Channel flagship science and technology show "Daily Planet". I was asked to comment on a video of an English bulldog puppy dreaming and to answer a few questions on dreaming in animals.

I feel confident claiming that all mammals dream but this does not mean that other animals do not dream. We really just don't know if they do or not and we should keep the door open about this very challenging question. Charles Darwin's ideas about evolutionary continuity note that the differences among various species in anatomy, physiology, behavior, and emotions, for example, are differences in degree rather than kind. This basically means that the differences are shades of gray and not stark, black and white, variations. So, following up on Darwin, I like to say, "If we have or do something, 'they' (other animals) have or do it too."

3 comments:

uglyblackjohn said...

Do animals dream?
Do they EAT?
But my question would be, "Do they have gods?".

CNu said...

If the history of our psychological development is any indication, I believe that would depend on whether or not they have language, and, if their proto-linguistic experience included a phase of auditory "command" hallucinations emanating from their archaic and untaught Emotional and Instinctual Centres(both of which they definitely have) until such time as their Thinking Centre (language(symbolic) representational) system became fully fledged and capable of an internal representation of their organism independent of the archaic control centres.

CNu said...

My comment to DD is germaine to this question. http://squeezingthehourglass.blogspot.com/2012/12/lets-talk-about-time.html?showComment=1355081388906#c150245347855803264

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