If someone dreams, what does that imply about their sense of self? Their intelligence? Their sentience?
Good questions, all, to which we still don’t have the answers. We know that some animals dream – dogs, for instance – but we still don’t really understand yet what dreaming actually *is*, and why it happens.
But if we *could* answer these questions, the answer have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of what it means to be intelligent and/or sentient, because it looks like a far wider range of animals dream than we ever suspected.
You’ve probably seen this adorable video of an octopus apparently dreaming – changing colour and camouflage while it sleeps – doing the rounds around the Internet the last two weeks, but if you haven’t, it’s short and super cute (I love octopuses!!) and worth the watch 🙂 The owner/scientist even narrates the likely contents of the dream based on the changes in the octopus’s appearance 😀
What fun things have you found on the web this week?