# Do rats dream?



## Hero-wuff (Sep 27, 2012)

I was watching my little Scruffy sleep today and his eye was kinda half open and he was lay on his side, twitching. Like, twitching his whiskers and arms and mouth now and then. I tried to take a video but my phone died on me :|
I was worried about him so i put my hand in and stroked him but he didn't respond right away until i half lifted him off the ground and they he pirked back to life again.
But, was he dreaming or having a mini seizure or something?
This was him before he started twitching


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## Rumy91989 (Dec 31, 2012)

Hmm, it's a hard call. He looks super young and little so I'd definitely keep an eye on him in case it is a nerve or heart issue. I think rats probably dream, but I've never seen mine move in their sleep so I'm not sure if that's something that normally happens or not.


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## Hero-wuff (Sep 27, 2012)

He is young, about 11 weeks now. I have just cured him for a respiratory infection, i really hope there's nothing else wrong with him


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## preciouscreature (Feb 13, 2013)

Rats do indeed dream! I don't know from mine, but I have read about it and seen a documentary where a rat was plugged into some sort of brain reading device. The device read that the rat was actually dreaming of its rat maze - trying to solve the best way to get through it faster as to get a treat at the end quicker! The one in the documentary even twitched and stuff too. So, they do dream and it is quite possible your baby was doing just that. Research shows that animals will dream of things that occur during waking time in an evolutionary attempt to learn from the past day or hours. 

Do keep an eye on him just in case!


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## RosesRufflesandRats (Apr 25, 2013)

They do! They have done studies on them. They had rats run through mazes and they used something to measure their dreams as they slept afterward. The first part of sleep was short images of what they had seen running through the maze, and then they actually planned how they might run it the next day, problem solving in their sleep. When they woke up, they did better. It was a documentary on dreaming on Netflix...can't remember the exact name but it's worth watching if you can get a hold of it.


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## RosesRufflesandRats (Apr 25, 2013)

preciouscreature said:


> Rats do indeed dream! I don't know from mine, but I have read about it and seen a documentary where a rat was plugged into some sort of brain reading device. The device read that the rat was actually dreaming of its rat maze - trying to solve the best way to get through it faster as to get a treat at the end quicker! The one in the documentary even twitched and stuff too. So, they do dream and it is quite possible your baby was doing just that. Research shows that animals will dream of things that occur during waking time in an evolutionary attempt to learn from the past day or hours.
> 
> Do keep an eye on him just in case!


Heehee, didn't see this til after I posted mine. I think we watched the same documentary! I found it quite fascinating.


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## RosesRufflesandRats (Apr 25, 2013)

I just read the rest of it. He's really cute. I really honestly think he was just dreaming. My dog twitches when he sleeps and it looks like he is having a seizure but he's absolutely fine. He also "rumbles" lol, he will make a rumbling sound and his belly ripples like a wave and it's freaky/hilarious!


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## ratclaws (Nov 11, 2012)

He was dreaming, don't worry. I've seen all my rats twitch a lot while sleeping and they're fine, it's completely natural.


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## alexn (Sep 30, 2012)

Toki used to dream a lot, but once or twice she had nightmares and would literally jump half across the cage straight from being asleep 

Sent from Petguide.com Free App


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

To second the research done by others... Fuzzy Rat always went to the car when it got dark... She can find the car from over 1/4 mile away, making every turn in the correct order.... We usually parked in the same spot, but one day we parked a few spaces over.

After quite a long and precise walk she went strait to the spot we parked yesterday going right past our car. I repeated the test and she would always go to the place we parked the car the day before then stop and look around preen and think and go the the correct car or start a search pattern. 

Rats process location information in their sleep. For Fuzzy Rat, the walk through the park was just a simple maze, using landmarks and remembering where to turn just like a rat in a lab. Sure the distance was spread over a quarter mile or more, but the skill set is the same. And if you really think about it wild rats forage over vast distances. A rat in a subway system might have to travel a few miles a day to find food and water and patrol it's territory, not to mention avoid humans and subways.

What I actually found worth exploring further was that last summer she started taking short cuts. My daughter let her play by the little creek and she discovered she could slog across it on low tide, later that day she shortcut the bridge for the first time and turned off the walking path precisely opposed to where she was about 70 yards away across the mini-golf course and the creek. The short cut would have saved her about 150 yards of walking.

Unfortunately the season ended and Fuzzy Rat's tumors are way to large now to let her do any cross country expeditions, but on at least two occasions she clearly calculated a shorter route from point A to point B even though she couldn't see her goal. No guess how she does it. Whether her brain can map vast areas or rats have some kind of built in GPS nav system, I'm pretty sure a rat can't get lost if it doesn't panic.


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## kyzer (Apr 28, 2013)

They definitely do dream! Look up "The Dream Life of Rats" on YouTube. I think it might be part of the documentary that was mentioned, really interesting stuff!


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## Limouri (Apr 19, 2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVj8XRORzmQ


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