Anyone think their reptiles can dream?

[Sauzo]

So tonight I noticed Caesar came flying out of his warm hide and went crazy on the cage doors. He was breathing heavy and seemed scared. I let him sit for a few, then got him out and held him. He seemed scared for a minute, then when he smelled me and climbed on me a bit, he mellowed out and is now curled up sleeping on my arm with his face in my hand. Seemed like a bad dream? My beardie did this before when she was asleep. I picked her up and wrapped her in her blanket and she calmed down and went back to sleep. I wonder if reptiles can actually have bad dreams.

[redshepherd]

Maybe they can dream! Simple things like eating and not doing crap or getting frightened by a large hand. LOL

It's possible that he sensed something or a vibration we don't notice that scared them. Sometimes even the smallest noise or movement while I'm around will startle one of my snakes out of their wits, while at other times, they don't react at all to louder sounds/bigger movements.

[Sauzo]

Yeah maybe. It's happened to my bearded dragon too. Only once in about 4 years but same thing, she flew out of blanket on her hammock and ran across the cage and stood there looking shocked and scared. With Caesar, it scared me too lol. I was sitting next to the cage messing on the computer and all of a sudden I hear banging from his cage and look over to him pushing all over the glass doors and then laying on the floor breathing hard. he looked shocked. I opened the doors and picked him up and like I said, he checked me out by climbing on me for a bit, then settled in on my arm and curled up and put his head under his coils and sat there for 2 hours while I watched a movie lol. He finally moved and popped his head out and sat there awake lol. I ended up putting him back as I wanted a snack lol. He is mellow again. It seems when hungry, he is a terror and when full, he is an angel lol. Here's a picture of him doing the curling on my arm thing. not a picture tonight as I wasn't planning for this so didn't have the camera handy lol.

[KMG]

If they can dream what would be a bad dream to them. Im mean, since our snakes have never had to deal with being hunted as food and having to fight to survive it doesn't seem like they have much to draw from. I would hope that most of our snakes only have happy memories and therefor couldn't have a bad dream.

Wouldn't it be nice to not be able to have bad dreams? Seems like the only dreams I have are bad, not scary, just bad. Most often work related and in some kind of fight or horrific event.

[Sauzo]

If they can dream what would be a bad dream to them. Im mean, since our snakes have never had to deal with being hunted as food and having to fight to survive it doesn't seem like they have much to draw from. I would hope that most of our snakes only have happy memories and therefor couldn't have a bad dream.

Wouldn't it be nice to not be able to have bad dreams? Seems like the only dreams I have are bad, not scary, just bad. Most often work related and in some kind of fight or horrific event.

Well true, I guess they wouldn't have a lot of "bad" stuff to draw off of since they don't watch tv or stuff lol. It just seems like it was a dream or something. He was just sleeping in his warm hide all curled up and had dinner last night. And like I said, he came out of that hide like a bullet from a gun and just windshield wiped the glass doors like all hell broke loose for about 5 secs. Then laid down and was breathing heavy. He was on high alert too. once I got him out and relaxed, he went back to normal breathing and went to sleep for the 2 hours lol. After that I put him back and he was mellow, sat on top of his warm hide for a min then crawled behind the hide and curled back up on the flexwatt.

I guess it could have been a vibration but I live in a quiet residential neighborhood and it was the evening so not much was happening. Just weird as the only other time I saw this was from my beardie probably almost 4 years ago.

[Coluber42]

In humans, dreaming is closely connected with learning and reinforcing skills. I would not be surprised if that is true across all vertebrates. So if an animal has encountered a new object or a new environment, its dreams might involve imagined ways of navigating or manipulating that environment, or imagined places that threats could come from. There is a fair amount of research that demonstrates that we don't so much learn skills at the time that we are practicing them; we learn them while we are asleep afterward. I suspect the same is true of animals learning about new objects or environments, learning that their keepers aren't a threat, etc.

But the surface trappings of dreams may not be things we actually encounter or things that make any kind of sense in the real world. It's more like, if the dream is going to be about a certain skill, or a feeling, or a need to escape from something, our brains just tack on some scenery because that's how we conceptualize things. Lots of little kids have dreams about being chased by scary monsters and wild animals, even though they have never actually been threatened by one.

For a reptile, who the heck knows. But they still have a deep seated instinct to flee from certain things - sudden movements, something swooping down from above or popping out from behind a large object, etc - even if they've never seen a predator in their life. Their brains still "rehearse" those scenarios while they're asleep, so that if it ever does happen the required response is ready to go. Maybe the scenario looks more like the vacuum cleaner suddenly swooping down and grabbing them, or a giant spray bottle leaping out from behind a rock, or a creature that looks like their keeper but wants to eat them, or maybe it's nothing nearly that concrete and it's just a vague impression of a shape leaping out to grab them. Maybe it's set off because they were startled during the day when the spray bottle fell off the shelf with a bang or something, and maybe it's just a weird thing that brains do because brains are strange and mysterious.

Interesting subject to contemplate, in any case.

[KMG]

Maybe he was working out.

[Jeffco]

There is evidence for R.E.M. sleep in Bearded Dragons (and most likely it is found in other reptiles). In humans this is the phase of sleep where dreaming occurs. Here is an article about it:https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016...-dragons-dream

[Sauzo]

I like that. I also read an article a long time ago about bearded dragons actually learning from each other. The scientists, taught 1 dragon how to slide a glass door open to get to a bug. The other dragons had no idea and just kept trying to get to it. Then they put the dragon who learned how to do it and the other dragons watched him and they learned how to do it too. Guess reptiles maybe just weren't getting the credit they deserved all these years and they possibly are smarter and/or more evolved than we thought

[KMG]

I've always thought snakes are smarter than people think.