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双语科普故事

萌宠菠菠乐园
2024-10-26 12:30

What Do Dogs and Cats Dream About?

No matter how much trouble your pet gets into when they're awake, few sights are as peaceful as a dog curled up in their bed or a cat stretched out in the sun, snoring away. But their experience of sleep can feel impenetrable. What fills the dreams of a dog or cat?

无论你的宠物在清醒时惹了多少麻烦，很少有景象能像狗狗蜷缩在床上或猫咪在阳光下伸懒腰打呼噜那样安详。但是它们的睡眠体验似乎难以捉摸。狗或者猫的梦里究竟会有什么呢？

That's a tricky question to answer. Snowball isn't keeping a dream journal, and there's no technology yet that can translate the brain activity of even a sleeping human into a secondhand experience of their dream world, much less a sleeping animal. “No one has done research on the content of animals’ dreams,” says Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard University and author of the book The Committee of Sleep.

这是一个棘手的问题。雪球（宠物名）又不会记录梦境日记，而且目前还没有技术能将即使是人类睡眠时的大脑活动转化为他们梦境世界的二手体验，更别提一只正在睡觉的动物了。“还没有人对动物梦境的内容做过研究，”哈佛大学梦境研究者、《睡眠委员会》一书的作者迪尔德丽·巴雷特说道。

But Rover's dreamscape isn't entirely impenetrable, at least to educated guesses. First of all, Barrett says, only your furrier friends appear to dream. Fish, for example, don't seem to display rapid eye movement (REM), the phase of sleep during which dreams are most common in humans. “I think it's a really good guess that they don't have dreams in the sense of anything like the cognitive activity that we call dreams,” she says.

然而，关于罗弗（宠物名）梦境的探索并非全然不可触及，至少在基于合理推断的层面上是如此。首要地，巴雷特指出，似乎仅限于那些覆有毛发的伴侣动物才展现出梦境行为。举例来说，鱼类并未表现出快速眼动（REM）现象，这是人类在睡眠中最常见的梦境阶段。她说道：“据此，有充分依据推测，它们并不具备我们所称的那种，与认知活动相关联的梦境体验。”

Whether birds experience REM sleep is less clear, Barrett says. And some marine mammals always keep one side of their brain awake even while the other sleeps, with no or very strange REM sleep involved. That means seals and dolphins likely don't dream in anything like the way humans do. But the mammals we keep as pets are solidly REM sleepers. “I think it's a very safe, strong guess that they are having some kind of cognitive brain activity that is as much like our dreams as their waking perceptions are like ours,” she says.

巴雷特指出，目前尚不清楚鸟类是否会经历快速眼动（REM）睡眠阶段。另外，部分海洋哺乳动物在睡眠过程中，即便一侧大脑处于休息状态，另一侧大脑仍保持清醒，且几乎不展现或仅展现极为异常的REM睡眠特征。这表明，海豹和海豚的梦境体验可能与人类大相径庭。然而，我们当作宠物豢养的哺乳动物则明确展现出REM睡眠行为。她进一步阐述：“我认为可以非常稳妥地大胆推测，它们正进行着某种认知性脑活动，这种活动在性质上与我们的梦境相仿，正如它们清醒时的感知方式与我们的相似之处。”

That doesn't mean that cats and dogs experience humanlike dreams. “It would be a mistake to assume that other animals dream in the same way that we do, just in their nonhuman minds and bodies,” says David Peña-Guzmán, a philosopher at San Francisco State University and author of the book When Animals Dream.

这并不意味着猫和狗会拥有与人类相似的梦境体验。“若假定其他动物仅是以其非人类的心智与身体，按照与人类完全相同的方式做梦，那将是一个误解。”旧金山州立大学哲学家、《当动物做梦时》一书作者戴维·佩纳-古兹曼如是说。

For example, humans rarely report scents when recounting dreams; however, we should expect dogs to dream in smells, he says, given that olfaction is so central to their waking experience of the world. “We need to think about what a uniquely canine or uniquely feline dream might be, based on what we know about the experiences of dogs and cats,” Peña-Guzmán says. “They dream on their own terms.”

例如，人类在回忆梦境时很少会提到气味；然而，他指出，考虑到嗅觉对狗在清醒状态下感知世界的重要性，我们有理由推测狗可能会在梦中以气味的形式进行体验。“我们需要基于我们对狗和猫行为体验的了解，去设想什么是独特于犬类或猫类的梦境，”佩尼亚-古斯曼说道，“它们的梦境遵循着它们自身的感知逻辑。”

In addition, Barrett suggests the so-called continuity hypothesis for dreaming might apply to dogs and cats. This idea, which is supported by strong evidence in humans, holds that people's dreams reflect their daily experiences. (An alternative idea, called the compensatory hypothesis, holds that people’s dreams reflect what they lack in daily life and is less supported, Barrett says.)

此外，巴雷特提出，所谓的梦境连续性假设可能也适用于狗和猫。这一在人类研究中获得强有力证据支持的观点认为，人们的梦境是其日常经历的反映。（巴雷特指出，另一种观点，即补偿假说，认为人们的梦境反映了他们在日常生活中所缺失的内容，但这一观点的支持力度较小。）

“Whatever you can observe dogs being interested in by day is what you would expect to show up in their dreams,” Barrett says. “That's so much how it works for us that it would be surprising if they somehow did the compensation pattern.” For pet dogs, that likely means dreaming about food, play and yes, beloved owners, she says.

“你白天观察到狗对何物感兴趣，便可预期这些内容会出现在它们的梦中，”巴雷特说道。“对我们人类来说，情况也非常类似，所以如果它们的梦境以某种方式呈现出补偿性模式，那才会让人感到惊讶。”对宠物狗而言，这可能意味着它们会梦到食物、玩耍，当然还有它们心爱的主人，她补充道。

A unique experiment offers a glimpse inside feline dreams. In the late 1970s, a neuroscientist tested a theory about which part of the brain prevents the body from acting out what's happening in a dream. In that study, the late Michel Jouvet, then at the Claude Bernard University Lyon in France, damaged a region called the pons in cats. The cats indeed began moving during REM sleep; in particular, they displayed behaviour that scientists interpreted as hunting small prey.

一项独特的实验为我们提供了一窥猫科动物梦境的机会。20世纪70年代末，一位神经科学家对大脑中哪个部分会抑制身体在梦中将梦境付诸行动的理论进行了探究。在这项研究中，当时在法国里昂克劳德·伯纳德大学任职的米歇尔·朱韦（已故）损伤了猫的一个名为脑桥的大脑区域。结果，这些猫在快速眼动（REM）睡眠期间确实开始活动；特别地，它们展现出了科学家解读为捕猎小型猎物的行为。

“It's a very safe assumption that cats dream about stalking and pouncing on prey—stronger than any extrapolation,” Barrett says. She also expects cats' dreams to follow the continuity hypothesis, although, of course, your feline's daily experiences are different from Fido's. Other cat dreams might include lying in the sun, stretching and playing with toys, she notes.

巴雷特表示：“我们可以相当有把握地推测，猫会梦到潜行和猛扑猎物的场景——这一假设比任何推测都更为有力。”她还预测，猫的梦境会遵循连续性假说，当然，每只猫的日常经历都是独一无二的，比如你的猫和费多（此处为示例猫名）就不尽相同。她进一步指出，猫的其他梦境可能还包括躺在阳光下享受、伸展四肢以及玩弄玩具等。

And are pet cats, like dogs, dreaming about their humans? Yes—in the most feline way, she says. “You would kind of expect that the cats that had a fairly strong attachment to owners would dream about owners some—but probably not as much as dogs.”

那么，宠物猫是否也会如同狗一般，梦到它们的主人呢？答案是肯定的——以一种极具猫科动物特色的方式，她这样说道。“你可能会认为，那些对主人有着较强依恋的猫，也会梦到主人——不过，可能不会像狗梦到主人那样频繁。”