Anyway, do animals have dreams? I would think the dreams wouldn't be like our own. They wouldn't dream of a pile of dog bones or of us (humans) being their pets.

Hmm, would animal instincts still effect their dreams (if they do dream)? In other words, would a domesticated dog have similiar dreams as a wild one? And what about parrots and birds that repeat what we say? Do you think they "talk" in their dreams...not out load but inside their dream?

Not sure where to put this, so it's here in the General forum, I didn't put it in parapsychology because it's not really unexplained (I don't think)

According to this article - yes they do. :)

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/dreaming.html

Thanks EvilPoet! It answered almost every question!

We know that they are in fact dreaming and their dreams are connected to actual experiences."
I find this statement interesting because it indicates that animals could have an imagination.
The researchers then examined more than 40 REM episodes recorded while the rats slept. About half repeated the unique signature of brain activity that was created as the animal ran. The correlation was so close that the researchers found that as the animal dreamed, they could reconstruct where it would be in the maze if it were awake and whether the animal was dreaming of running or standing still.
Amazing they can read a rat's mind.

One theory they were studying was if sleep was connected to developing a long-term memory. It would be interesting to test this on a talking parrot...

:D this could get interesting..

You are welcome grazzhoppa, glad it was helpful.

I don't think people give animals the credit they deserve.
My cats have been very loyal friends - always there. I can't
say that about a lot of the humans I have met in my lifetime,
if you know what I mean. ;)

c'mon...haven't we all seen a dog "running" while on its side, sleeping? How could it not be dreaming?

No question in my mind.

My two hunting dogs appear to relive the "thrill of the chase"
every night. When they hit REM sleep, they run, bark howl,
snuffle... it's actually very amusing stuff to watch.

Well, technically people are animals. Do we dream? Answered.

hee hee....everytime i see your avatar i crack up...er, well...not crack up ...more like chuckle..ok. i laugh...:D :p

my cat was hissing in his sleep once...




the question is... are animals able to realize that they are having dreams?


ever had a pet that went totaly nuts after a good nap :p

must be the 2000 yrs of christian indoctrination at play here

you totaly lost me with that one spookz...
please to clarify what you ment.

My cat sleeps so heavily that you can pick her up and move her to the top of the bookshelf... Ive done it before. She does not wake up for anything. But I suspect that she dreams because on ocassion she does things with her paws and one time meowed while she was asleep.

Can cats even meow in their sleep?

CounslerCoffee: Your cat sounds a lot like my cat. Not only does
she meow in her sleep but she snores really loud too. :)

Does your cat sigh to? My cat sighs when shes tired or bored she just goes "Sigh." Its so cute.:D

"Aww isnt the puddy tat cute. Kitty want some food?!"
the cats thinking "Meow, i think the human got into my catnip again!"

I dont let my cat do Nip. She has been getting fat though. I only feed her once a day, and its suppose to last her all day but my mom just kept filling her bowl back up! So shes gotten really fat... which is so cute.:D Shes small and fat. Oh and her name is Pua, its hawaiin for flower or something.

Oh yeah. Vote for me! http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13732

Yup she sighs too and I agree it is very cute. Out of all 4
of my cats Sienna is the most active and vocal whether
she is awake or sleeping.

Your cat sounds really cool. Do you have any pics of her?
If so, I think you should post them in the picture thread. :D

Hmm. Id have to take some of the pics to school to scan them, I can do that tomarrow! er, I mean today. I didnt work at the walmart tonight but Im trying to keep my sleep on track by not going to sleep. Ive been on sciforums for hours.

I think I have pics of her somewhere, Im not really sure. You have four cats!? Do you have an electronic cat litter box to? Those things are awesome.

Yes I have 4 - Baby, Samantha, Hunter, and Sienna.
No electronic cat litter box just me. Whoops! I think
we are getting a bit off topic here - don't want to
hijack the thread.

:D We now return you to the original topic ....

What was the original Topic again?! ... I got lost in all the kitty litter..

Do animals dream? :)

Donald Griffin was at the Central Park Zoo last month watching the polar bears nuzzle a synthetic log smeared with Skippy. "They really like that peanut butter," Dr. Griffin observed as Gus, 800 pounds, tried to fit his nose into an enticingly sticky knothole.
To the untutored eye it looked like just another feeding time at the zoo, but at Central Park the exercise with the log and snack goes by the grander name of "animal enrichment" and is intended to stimulate the bears' minds as well as their appetites. It's a concept for which the bears have Griffin, 85, in large part to thank. Twenty-five years ago he published a short book suggesting that humans didn't have the monopoly on thoughts and feelings. Animals, he argued, most likely had them, too.
Scientists were appalled. According to the behaviorist doctrine that held sway at the time, animals were little more than "stimulus response automata," robots with a central nervous system. The idea that an ant or an elephant might have thoughts, images, experiences or beliefs was not just laughable; it was seditious. After Griffin published a second brief on behalf of animal consciousness in the 1980's, one behaviorist labeled it " 'The Satanic Verses' of animal behavior."
Were it not for the fact that he had a tenured position at Rockefeller University as well as an international reputation, Griffin might have found himself out of a job. (As a graduate student at Harvard in the 1940's, he helped solve the mystery of how bats navigate in the dark and coined the term echolocation to describe it.)
"He insisted that people look at animal consciousness when it was considered anthropomorphic and flaky," said Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis. "Anyone else would have been hooted out."
But the field Griffin christened cognitive ethology ultimately took off. Over the last decade alone a flood of new data have emerged that would seem to have turned the tide definitively in his favor. In Arizona an African Gray parrot named Alex can identify colors and shapes as well as any preschooler. In Georgia a bonobo ape named Kanzi converses with his trainer via computer keyboard and watches Tarzan movies on television. Last week researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published evidence suggesting that rats dream. Animal enrichment programs featuring mental puzzles disguised as toys and treats have become a standard part of daily life at zoos. And this spring the University of Chicago Press will issue an updated edition of Griffin's 1992 book, "Animal Minds."
If Griffin, a tall, thin decorous man with a predilection for animal-print ties, views these developments as vindication, he is too modest to say so. "We know so very little," he said. "Scientists, including me, have come to be very cautious. Early work on primate gestures and facial expressions was grossly misinterpreted."
In fact the recent findings appear to have only intensified the debate over animal consciousness. Lately, experts on the human mind - philosophers and psychologist - have been weighing in alongside the scientists. For if it turns out that animals can think, then the idea that consciousness is unique to humans - a basic assumption in Western thought since Descartes - becomes impossible to maintain.
Clearly Gus, Alex and Kanzi aren't Cartesian automatons, but just how conscious are they? Do they experience pain, desire and other sensations the way humans do? (Philosophers call this phenomenal consciousness.) Are they capable of thinking about their experiences? (Philosophers call this self-consciousness.) Do they have beliefs? What about remembering the past? Do earthworms have some form of consciousness? What about salamanders? Is it even possible to study an animal's inner life?
The range of opinion on these questions is nearly as great as the number of possible answers. Surveying the scholarship in the journal Philosophia in 1988, the University of Houston professor Justin Leiber found a field riven by discordant claims. Two philosophers agreed in "denying consciousness to sponges." One drew the line "somewhere between the shrimp and the oyster." Another proved willing to "speculate about the subjective experience of tapeworms," while yet another had referred to the "inner life of cockroaches." More recently the Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett declared the state of thinking on animal consciousness a "mess."
On the one hand there are the pro-consciousness philosophers like Colin McGinn, a professor at Rutgers University, and Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton and a leading animal rights advocate. These scholars believe that most if not all animals have phenomenal consciousness. "I think it's plain common sense that animals have conscious states," McGinn said. "Animals way down to insects have phenomenal consciousness. It's a primitive feature of the biological world."
On the other hand there are the skeptics like Dennett and Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia University. What "are you seeing when you see sentience in a creature?" Dennett asked in a 1995 essay. "It is in fact ridiculously easy to induce powerful intuitions of not just sentience but full-blown consciousness (ripe with malevolence or curiosity or friendship) by exposing people to quite simple robots made to move in familiar mammalian ways at mammalian speeds."
Terrace, who has studied apes and monkeys in his lab, concedes that animals think, but draws the line at consciousness. "Language is necessary for consciousness," he said. "There is something going on in animals' heads, but it's not linguistic."
Griffin appears mildly amused by the debate his work has helped unleash. During his visit to the Central Park Zoo he gave a talk to donors and trustees. "Daniel Dennett calls the pursuit of animal consciousness a 'wild goose chase,'" he told the audience with a chuckle. "But there are no neurons or synapses in the human brain that aren't also in animals. It's as difficult to disprove animal consciousness as it is to prove it."
Although officially retired, Griffin is still active in the field. He is currently investigating a colony of beavers near his home in Lexington, Mass. "They're obviously animals that might be thinking of what they're doing," he said.
(01/03/2001) New York Times)

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christianity


The Church of England occupies a special position in the (unwritten) Constitution of the United Kingdom whereby it considers itself the moral arbiter of the nation - entitled to speak with authority on any moral theme. It unofficially shares this position with the Catholic Church, which is often perceived as being less wishy-washy in its views and so more reliable if a single definitive opinion is required. The Catholic Church, though not integrated into the Constitution also has the advantage of a more dedicated following than the C of E. The other sources of moral rightness accessible to the media and to government are the Moslem religion and the Jewish one. These both have the disadvantage of being more diverse and less centralised than either of the above. It is, of course, a great pity that the non-religious sources of moral guidance are less easily identifiable since they are made up of an even wider and more diverse group of thinking individuals - nor do they have the political privilege and financial muscle of the major religions.

Both government and the media often appear to assume that religion is the only legitimate source of moral guidance - the purpose of this article is to demonstrate the shallowness of this supposition in the case of Christianity.

The word animal is derived from the Latin anima = soul but despite this Christianity has traditionally taught that animals have more in common with stones than with human beings (interestingly, in medieval Europe animals were often seen to be satellites of Satan - the devil had horns, cloven feet and a pointy tail).

The writer was taught at his (Catholic) school that everything on Earth, including all the animals, was put here to satisfy the needs of mankind, and that there was no fundamental difference between animate and inanimate things - only we were different. Joseph Rickaby SJ, an influential Jesuit theologian said, as did Descartes, that animals had no souls, no rights and no feelings and were no more than automata - like clocks - and if they squeaked or made noises when damaged this was equivalent to the mechanical sounds a clock would make if it fell to the floor and was similarly damaged. This attitude was reflected in the behaviour of Pope Pius lX when he sought to prevent the setting up of the Italian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on the grounds that animals have no souls. (Click here for more on Pius 1X.) Thomas Aquinas is also regarded as an authority as denying that animals have souls but contradicted himself elsewhere writing: 'we 'must use animals in accordance with the Divine Purpose lest at the Day of Judgment they give evidence against us before the throne' (source currently unavailable - please write in if you know it).

The unwritten assumption was also that we could continue to exploit these things on the basis that 'God would provide' and that there would be no lasting damage to the basic system that ensures our survival - the ecosystem. A similar logic applies to birth control - God does not want us to use it (rhythm method excluded) so that means if we do not do so there will be no fearful consequences since God could not possibly require of us something which is intrinsically harmful. Alternatively, of course this could be the way God wishes to bring about the end of the world since it is difficult to think of anything more devastating to the planet than the continued growth of the human population.

animal souls (http://www.eclipse.co.uk/thoughts/animalsouls.htm#2)

Animals and Ethics
(http://www.vege-consciousness.org/ethics.htm)

Animal Consciousness (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/)

My cat also used to hiss in her sleep occasionally, along with some twitching. I also once woke her up and was immediately hissed at me (entirely abnormal for her). As fast as she started hissing she stopped, calmed down, and looked around, as if reorienting herself in her new surroundings. It's exactly the kind of reaction you'd expect if you shook a human out of a bad dream.

My dog also dreams.
In his sleep he sometimes starts to move his as if he ran legs and yelps.

sometimes he has a bad dream and the all of a sudden he rushes up and runs barking to the door

I don't know why we ask- do animals dream?
aren't we animals? :)

Is it wrong to say we're above the "beasts?" We have more advanced communcation in the sense that we can share our thoughts and logic with each other, we have trickery...lies. And we use it all for more than survival. Or is that my exposure to religous propaganda talking?

How do you think domesticated animals perceive us in their dreams?

One of my dogs is deaf, going blind in one eye, has arthiritis (sp?), and only gets up to go to the bathroom and eat. She doesn't do much when she sleeps. My other dog just snores.
My cats are very alert when they're sleeping though. One creak in the floorboards will wake them up. And no, they're not on the Nip.

Here's one of my cats getting up from a hard-days sleep under the couch cover. It's a picture of a picture, so it may be a little dark.

Its possible to animals are dreaming because the life shows us a dreamcaptured world;)

Originally posted by Fraggle Rocker
From the Greek pantheon to Shakespeare's casts to Jung's archetypes, the human spirit has been consistently anaylzed into 23 (if I got the number right) vectors. Perhaps gorillas only have 15 and parrots only 6. And wouldn't it be fascinating if rather than being a subset of ours, they have some vectors that we don't? It would be an enormous experience to "hear" Koko describe the images in one of his (her?) dreams.


elaborate please