Cuando los animales sueñan

Whether it's on your couch or on TikTok, surely you've seen a dog that moves its paws, growls or sniffs while it sleeps. You must have thought that he is dreaming, so why would humans be the only dreamers on Earth? However, and although it is hard to believe, the first scientific article on animal sleep was published in 2020 and the first book on the subject is in your hands. How is it possible? The reason is simple: in the manner of collective self-deception, the bulk of the scientific community dogmatically continues to deny that animals dream because that fact would undermine the traditional division between humanity and animality. And it is that dreaming is not something banal: it implies the use of faculties that for millennia we have considered proper only to humans, and from which the ethical statute and inalienable rights that we assign ourselves exclusively are derived. If we recognize that animals dream, we can no longer see them as simple masses of organic matter, but as conscious beings and architects of their own realities, complete and inviolable. The rejection of animal interiority (including the oneiric) thus easily turns into disinterest in animal welfare. Focusing his research on beings as different as dogs, cats, birds, octopuses, chimpanzees or whales, David M. Peña-Guzmán, a specialist in the field of zoology and in the theory of consciousness, guides us on an amazing journey -which masterfully brings together investigative rigor, narrative dynamism and poetic acuity - for the psychic interiority of animals and for the scientific, philosophical and ethical debates that it convenes. It is very likely that after reading this book you will no longer wonder if animals dream or not, but rather what their dreams are for in the great adventure of evolution. And in any case, you will never look at animals in the same way again.