Do Pigeons Dream?

Has anyone come across any studies on pigeon sleep/dreaming? I remember reading an article years ago about studies on rat dreams--what they dream and why--but I've never come across any studies of pigeon (or bird) dreams.
Southy sleeps in my bedroom, and I notice sometimes he will flutter awake in the middle of the night, and not in response to noise disturbances, which makes me wonder if he'd startled himself awake from a dream.
I've walked under trees at night and heard a single bird fluttering in the branches, and I've always wondered if this was simply the startling sensation of waking, or if it signifies a bird coming awake out of a dream.
If anyone's read any studies on this, or if your pigeon seems to dream, I'd be interested to hear about it.

feathers111 wrote:

Has anyone come across any studies on pigeon sleep/dreaming? I remember reading an article years ago about studies on rat dreams--what they dream and why--but I've never come across any studies of pigeon (or bird) dreams.
Southy sleeps in my bedroom, and I notice sometimes he will flutter awake in the middle of the night, and not in response to noise disturbances, which makes me wonder if he'd startled himself awake from a dream.
I've walked under trees at night and heard a single bird fluttering in the branches, and I've always wondered if this was simply the startling sensation of waking, or if it signifies a bird coming awake out of a dream.
If anyone's read any studies on this, or if your pigeon seems to dream, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Interesting question, Dan and I don't have an answer.

Now that you have brought it up, I do remember my Sammy and Romey fluttering awake at times in their sleep. The sound would wake me. I hads forgotten about it until you brought it up.

Have you heard Southy purr yet?

I hear Blueberry and Little Dove making soft, faint sounds when they appear to be sleeping or napping.
Not sure if they're dreaming, but it wouldn't surprise me.

When Murai was still a little squab I would occasionaly hear her eeping very softly in the middle of the night. Maybe she was having dreams of being fed.

If other animals can dream then I don't see why pigeons cannot.

Our disabled pigeon, Elmo, often falls into deep sleep and occassionally he'll woof in his sleep. It's very sweet and we like to think he's dreaming something pleasant because the woof noise is very content sounding.

Please let us know if you find any research on pigeon's dreaming!

Well my Bank always growl (like angry low "croo" sound) in the middle of the night. I think he's just disturbed when he hears me flushing the toilet.

I haven't come across any research on it, but it seems very plausible -- you can definitely tell when a dog or cat is dreaming, and it's possible all animals dream.
Having said that, I doubt it's possible to know what a rat is dreaming about from an encephalogram.

Teresa wrote:

I haven't come across any research on it, but it seems very plausible -- you can definitely tell when a dog or cat is dreaming, and it's possible all animals dream.
Having said that, I doubt it's possible to know what a rat is dreaming about from an encephalogram.

I remember reading about a study of neural activity in rats at MIT in the 1990s that argued that lab rats forced to run in mazes were (surprise, surprise!) dreaming of mazes; this hypothesis was based on similar neural activities in the awake rats and the sleeping rats. Here's a link to a synopsis of the study:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/why-we-need-to-dream/?pagemode=print

But as you note, Teresa, it may be a leap from noting similarities in neural activities to assuming that the dream imagery is the same as waking perception.

Quite fascinating. I enjoyed the blog and saved it to favorites. I'm going to do some poking around and see if I can find any thing about pigeon's sleep.

and here it is...but nothing about dreaming.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303120357.htm

Scientists did research on birds’ EEG and birds do dream.
They suspect that birds dream about their songs, but cannot explain night frights in pet birds etc. (what about non-singers I would ask)
Keeping in mind that human mind and dreams are still generally unknown to us, birds and animals are much more complex than we suspect.
Actually people here know this, but science still needs to arrive to our knowledge level.

plamenh wrote:

Scientists did research on birds’ EEG and birds do dream.

They suspect that birds dream about their songs, but cannot explain night frights in pet birds etc. (what about non-singers I would ask)
Keeping in mind that human mind and dreams are still generally unknown to us, birds and animals are much more complex than we suspect.
Actually people here know this, but science still needs to arrive to our knowledge level.

Sadly, what the birds went through in order for the scientist to be able to record their brain waves (EEG) is nothing sort of animal abuse. IMO

Recently I read a book about scientific researches conducted on animals and some of them were on telepathy. It is prooven that some animals do have telepathic abilities too.

I have thought for a long while now that one of our ringneck dove dreams - or at least talks in his sleep. Sometimes late at night he will coo in a way that he never does in the day or even in the early part of the dark night. The coo is much softer/quieter and more muffled sounding than when he is awake. I can tell during these times that he's not prepared himself for cooing with his usual revving/puffing up of his chest to fill it with air as with the usual louder coo, too. When He does this very quiet one, we always say, "He's talking in his sleep again!"
All speculation our part, but somehow, we remain convinced...

Best wishes,