i was thinking about this yesterday...

i wonder if cavemen and primitive men had dreams. if they did, what did they dream about? did they realize that they were just dreams and that they weren't real, or did they think more about them? why humans evolve to dream? do dogs and other animals dream. well i'm pretty sure dogs do cause prince and stinkerbell always wimp and cry in their sleep. do other animals dream? do fish dream? do trees dream? do bacteria dream? hell, do bacteria even sleep?

if primitive men dreamt....lets say a cave man fell asleep and then dreamt he was flying...did he know it wasn't real? did they think that certain foods that they ate made them dream these crazy thoughts? they didn't have tv, so it must have been some form of entertainment for them.

what evolutionary significance would humans need to dream? why do we dream? how does that help us as a race to survive. it's a known fact that if you don't use it, you lose it. every single thing in our body and how our bodies function has a purpose and a place. if we didn't need it, evolutionarily, that thing would get smaller and smaller until it finally becomes non existant. for example, our appendix. it's virtually not really important for humans. i mean, we can live without it. it does secrete a very limited amount of substances that aid in digestion, but they aren't necessary for survival. hence, this is why, over time, appendices in humans have gotten smaller and smaller. eventually, it'll probably be gone. we may develop a new organ that has a totally useful function.

ok, i'm going off topic now. dreams. i can't think of a single reason why we have it. i can see no significance to having dreams that will cause the difference between life and death. maybe they aren't necessary for survival, but are a result of something else that we do need to survive. i don't know exactly what they result from, but maybe it results from the brain being dormant for some period of time. if this is the case, do people who are in comas dream that entire time? no. you only dream during the REM (rapid eye movement) period of sleep. i don't remember seeing a person in a coma who's eyes were racing back and forth beneath their eyelids. but to be honest, i've never seen a sleeping person's eyes moving back and forth either and they were dreaming.

i wonder if time in dreams is real time. like, can you have this dream that seemed like it lasted for 3 minutes, but then you wake up and you've been asleep six hours. well, nevermind. obviously there's a time lapse there.

and i know people who can be in a dream, wake up, then try to fall back to sleep so they can finish the dream and they actually do! that's pretty cool.

i'm just saying, i think there needs to be some hardcore research into the mechanisms of how dreams work and what their purpose is.

ok, i'm done ranting and raving.

this is fun, i like talking about science. science is my passion. my next blog, i think i'm gonna write about what i wrote for my master's thesis. it's really very interesting stuff. it's about HIV/AIDS and how some people are immune from it and how and why they are immune.

-jenny