By: Karen Plascencia
Elena looked over to see her dog twitch feverishly in his sleep. The dog made rapid movements with his legs in an almost running fashion, she could hear the low rumble of his growls coming deep from within his chest. She panicked for a split second as fear that something was wrong consumed her. She quickly went over to him, picking him up to see what was wrong. The dog quickly awoke, a bit spooked by the sudden movement, looking almost confused. Elena looked at her dog in relief, he was okay. She laughed as the dog began to wag his tail, though she began to wonder what had the dog been doing.
In 2017, a total of about 89.7 million dogs lived in households across the United States, and it’s no question why. Dogs are lovable energetic animals who can bring a smile onto almost anyone’s face. They are clever animals who have complex emotions and thinking processes, which is why many prefer them as friends or even train them to be service dogs. Dogs are intellectual enough that they have the ability to miss their owners, can easily understand our language, and can even have optimistic personalities. We know so much about dogs, like their anatomy, behavior, and so on, however what scientist don’t know much about is their brain activity during sleep. Throughout the year however, scientist have inferred that most animals are capable of dreaming.
It has been said in various studies that a dog’s brain is eerily similar to that of a human. Having a brain similar to humans indicates that dogs don’t only have a similar sleeping cycles, but probably also dream in picture such as we do. Dogs can recall memory, which is what scientist believe most of their dreams are about, meaning dogs dream about their daily activities and experiences, maybe even their owners. However, it is still unclear in the scientific community if dog even recall their dream or are aware of them.
Dreams have always been a scientific phenomenon as scientist have never discovered what provokes them to occur or how they develop, so to see that animals too can dream is completely riveting.
