Why Animals That Can Sleep Standing Up Evidently Only Dream When Lying Down

Publish date: 2024-05-08

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has performed some groundbreaking research into the dreams of rats. "We looked at the firing patterns of a collection of individual cells to determine the content of rats' dreams," stated Matthew Wilson of MIT. "We know that they are in fact dreaming and their dreams are connected to actual experiences." In the experiment, rats were trained to follow a route. Their brains were studied while doing so, and then during REM sleep.

Several of the rats' brains were seen to work in almost the exact way they had while they were following the route, the outlet reported. While dreaming, then, it appeared that they were "remembering" or "reliving" the action, as we may during dreams about places we've been to or people we've met.

Certain animals like elephants sleep while standing, BBC Science Focus reports. Specific biology is required to sleep standing up, though. The University of Pennsylvania's Amy Johnson explained to Oakhurst Dairy, "The legs of horses [and other animals] have what's known as the 'stay apparatus.' Their limbs contain tendons and ligaments that allow the animal to remain standing with minimal muscular effort." Thanks to this, they can evidently sleep lightly for extended periods of time, Johnson explains.

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