Do dogs ponder the future? Here’s what we can learn from animal dreams

Other animals may not ponder deep, existential questions, but the fact that they dream proves that they possess formidable memories and complex imaginations, even if their dreams flow in and out of them, as Darwin says, ‘without the aid of any form of language’.

First and foremost, we must respect the diversity of nature and not assume that all creatures who dream dream like we do. In all likelihood, different animals construct their dreamworlds in the same way they construct their waking realities – ie, in line with the sensory, perceptual, affective and cognitive capacities characteristic of their species, as well as the peculiarities of their own developmental trajectories and life histories.

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Every dream reflects the dreamer’s identity as a member of a species, as well as their unique curiosities, desires and trepidations as an individual. Perhaps all foxes dream ‘foxy’ dreams, but each fox will dream their ‘foxy’ dream – a dream that, in its very architecture, reflects and projects the individuality of its maker.

Whether we are academics, activists or lay people, we should strive for an Atwoodian sensibility to animals, a way of seeing animal experience as unfolding in the fault line between the universalism of the species and the particularism of the individual, in the gap between evolution and experience.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.