A Recent Boing Boing post led me to this article where MIT researches describe the possibility that Rats may dream in a similar manner to humans.
"Wilson showed that rats formed complex memories for sequences of events experienced while they were awake, and that these memories were replayed while they slept--perhaps reflecting the animal equivalent of dreaming...
...In the latest experiment, by recording brain activity simultaneously in the hippocampus and the visual cortex, Wilson and Ji demonstrated that replayed memories did, in fact, contain the visual images that were present during the running experience."
Another recent news item describing how Elephants can recognize themselves in mirrors is another step in understanding the connections between humans and other animals. If some great technological breakthrough is on our horizon, I feel the implications will weigh heavily upon our understanding and interactions with other animals. Up to this point technological progress has been a very human centric endeavor; perhaps a reorganization of our relationship to technology also means a reorganization of our relationships to other species of "animals"
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