Anyone think their reptiles can dream?

[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.