If you’re an animal lover you might think wondering about whether animals dream, is a bit of a no-brainer. Obviously your sleeping cat and dog aren’t twitch their paws and noses for the sake of it, they’re mousing or chasing after an elusive smell, the only trouble is, how do you go about proving it?

Well, sadly no matter how intelligent your pet is, it’s a pretty long shot that they’re going to wake up after a quick forty winks and say, “You’ll never guess, I was just dreaming about being the first animal to climb the Empire State Building, but some rotten gorilla beat me to it!”

However, thanks to some very clever bods at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a cage full of rats, it’s been officially confirmed animals do dream.

The rats (who will remain nameless to protect their identity) had their brainwaves recorded as they were trained to run through a maze. Then, as they slept, scientists analysed their brainwaves again and saw the same patterns of thought were recurring. Proving that not only were our rodenty friends dreaming, but in fact dreaming about something that had just learnt to do!

So there you have it! Officially animals do dream and scarily like their human counterparts their dreaming minds are often trying to make sense of the days events. In fact it brings a whole new meaning to the phrases ‘Cat Napping’ and ‘Sleeping like a Dog.’