I’ve read about research like that. One interesting result I recall is that unlike humans, animals appear to always or mostly have the same kind of dream; cats always dream of hunting, rats always dream of exploring.
I seriously doubt that. First off, what possible reason would humans be unique in dreaming about different things? Second, how do you test what the rat dreamed about? Ask it? We already know that animals have wet dreams, so there is sex in there somewhere at the very least.
Cats have behaviors independent of hunting and rats have behaviors independent of exploring. They are going to dream about stimuli unrelated to those activities. Truly, there is very few things that are unique to humans.
If no one thought that why would people ask if animals dream?
Both my current (Lab) and much missed (Husky) would dream in their sleep and have a variety of dreams. Usually the husky would run, wag his tail and other fun stuff. I’m sure once or twice he went up a tree; he did it often enough in real life. 
Sometimes, maybe he was on the hunt and trying to be stealthy or he was just having a plain bad dream. Those were not fun to wake him up from. No one wants to see their pet that… unhappy, especially while asleep, but while he’d never hurt one of us, since we didn’t know what was going on in his head, we were very, very careful about how we woke him up; especially since those dreams always included a nice showing of my, what big teeth you have.
The lab does the cutest thing: sound asleep and then slooowly a section of hair on his back starts to rise and one side of his lip starts to curl. It’s as if he has a little Mohawk on his back. Also the side of his face with the lip curl is the same side the most of the girls in my family do our lip curl when we aren’t happy, grossed out, ect. When we wake him up, he gets all offended like I was having the most wonderful dream, why did you bother me? He also gets woken up when he’s on the bed with me and is having super happy dreams because he has a very long, very strong tail and I am very delicate. Seriously, we’re all kind of surprised there aren’t holes in the sheet rock that are about the level of his happy tail (and boy does he have happy tail syndrome!).
I like the idea mentioned up thread and will suggest trying cupping a hand near his mouth to calm him. Thanks for the tip, PapSett. Although we do wonder exactly what his bad dreams could be. We figure he’s dreaming of running out of nummy treats or squeaky toys (you try finding squeaky toys for giant dogs that last more that five minutes - although if you know, please share!)
I’ve seen the horses have dreams (thoroughbreds) but I can’t go into detail because it’s been a while. I do know that my sweetpea’s horse always calms down when he’s nearby no matter how deeply asleep he is.
Now I want to cuddle my lab and he’s asleep elsewhere.
The fact that we are smarter and more mentally flexible than any other animal, or even or own prehuman ancestors.
Brain scans, and the already mentioned method of destroying its sleep paralysis center so it acts out its dreams.
However, those activities have priority over their other behaviors. Drop a starving rat into a cage with food, and it’ll explore the cage before eating; if a mouse skitters past a cat having sex she’ll try to pounce on it. Animals seem to have “override behaviors” like that, unlike us; a particular behavior that for that animal comes first. And it seems to match whatever it is they dream about.
Der Trihs, buddy, it’s simple evolution. You are falling into the same trap that animal rights people do. ie. You think the human brain is in some way exceptional and that we are “above” animals. You forget that we are animals. We are just a bunch of monkeys that use tools better than than the rest of the the things that aren’t plants.
But that’s just tools. It’s kind of our thing. But tool use doesn’t equal problem solving.
This is a simple evolutionary concept. Any animals brain is going to work on its niche. A rat is going to have rat thoughts and rat dreams. A human is going to have human thoughts and human dreams. Don’t get so overconfident about our ability to do calculus. The brain is just a muscle and “intelligence” is notoriously hard to define.
But mammals and birds have that brain muscle. Shit, if you think about pure neuro-processing power, how smart is a giant squid?
What I am saying it is the height of hubris to think that our brains are unique. Evolution doesn’t do “unique”.
I had a beagle that would sleep howl. She never howled when awake, though.
Then what you are saying is provably wrong. Our brains may not be different in kind, but they have been shown to be capable of more complex thought. There are things that our brains can do that no other recorded brain can. That does technically make us exceptional.
Examples include being self aware and being able to handle language. Do I really have to PM Blake to have him show all the studies again?
Unless you can provide cites that animals only dream about one subject, then well, go for it.
Also, who’s Blake?
This is really what I am shaking my head about. The ability to dream didn’t dawn on the animal kingdom when humans showed up. It is in no way unique. If you disagree, then cite something.
Current brain scanning technology is nowhere near being able to reveal what animals (or humans, for that matter) are dreaming about. Not even close.
As you say, though, the method of destroying the animal’s sleep paralysis center will tell you quite a bit. I do not think you are quite right, though, to say that cats only act out hunting in their dreams, when lesioned in this way. I have not re-read the chapter I linked to, but IIRC, although hunting and pouncing dream behavior was most common, it was not the only sort of behavior observed.
To the best of my knowledge, similar experiments have not been done with rats, or any other type of animal. It is not at all a trivial experiment to carry out. I rather think that there may, as yet, only have been the one guy sufficiently skilled in cat-neurosurgery to have been able to do this successfully in cats, both eliminating the sleep paralysis and avoiding cutting too much, and messing up the animals in all sorts of other ways that would interfere with their “natural” dream behavior.
And another thing…
Magpies are self aware. Magpies!
If no one thought that why would people ask if animals dream?
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Because they wondered if animals dream. That’s different than “so many people think that dreaming is a uniquely human trait.”
From 2010:
Their linguistic capabilities, however, still leave something to be desired.
Yep. I keep trying to teach them Spanish, but they can’t roll their “R”'s right.