Anyone who has ever had a pet probably believes (as I do) that animals dream. It is not uncommon for dogs and cats to simulate running as well as other movements and meow/bark in their sleep. But is this really dreaming, dreaming like we do?

I raise this question because today I am quite certain that I watched my cat have a very intense dream, or possibly even a nightmare. I think my cat sleep-hissed at me….. She was in a deep sleep when she opened her eyes and hissed loudly, then immediately closed her eyes (it was more of a passing out really) and laid her head back down and was instantly asleep again. She continued to make noise and move her legs and tail while she slept. Was she having some sort of nightmare about being at the kennel when we were on a recent trip? Was she dreaming that someone stole her food? I will never know the answer, but I am confident that she was indeed dreaming. And I am not the only one who thinks so.

According to a study done by The Center for Learning and Memory (CLM) at MIT animals do indeed dream, here is an excerpt:

Why do animals dream about one experience and not another? “This work allows us to evaluate the content of dreams and create tests to see which awake patterns create patterns when the animal is asleep,” Wilson said. “If we are able to evaluate the content of the dreaming state, we may be able to find out why certain events get replayed and others don’t.”

This work also raises questions about long-held assumptions about animals’ thought processes. Only a handful of species — among them chimps and dolphins — were thought to have any ability at all to recall and evaluate detailed sequences of events after they occurred. Wilson points out that “dreams are the ultimate off-line experience. This work demonstrates that animals are capable of re-evaluating their experiences when they are not in the midst of them.”

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