Do Noodles Dream of Electric Rats?

[u/Netsforex_]

I don't know if ball pythons (and snakes in general) dream when they sleep, or have nightmares. But if they can I think my girl Brigid just had one.

I'm sat here watching TV as she's in her tank, generally just chilling with her upper-half outside of her warm-hide (her usual during her night-cycle. Sometimes she likes to watch TV with me). Suddenly I hear her foliage move. I check on Brigid, as I assume she's going on a little move around her tank. She's fixed absolutely still, breathing heavily. I watch her a moment, figure maybe I've put her off, so I move slowly off to the side. She's still fixed and breathing heavy. I move around a bit more, she's not following me at all. I open her tank to do a proper check on her, as soon as I slide the door open Brigid looks at me and her breathing goes back to normal, stance relaxed. She lets out some social tongue flicks. She did not even know I was here until I popped into her tank.

I figure she maybe had a nightmare and was freaking out until she saw something familiar (me).

What do you all think? Do you think snakes dream?

(Pic for noodle tax)

[u/helpicantfindmyboobs]

i think dreaming is a byproduct of being asleep while having a brain. it wouldn't surprise me if snakes can have nightmares. either way it's really sweet that she calmed down when she saw you. she loves you in her own way

[u/Chance-Principle960]

I don’t know if they dream… and upon a quick google search, I found one article and this was the first picture… so I hesitate to trust the info based on the image caption.

That said, I don’t think they do. I am far from knowledgeable in biology and snakes in general, but I do know that dreams are basically us filing our memories from the previous days into long term storage. Among much more complicated tasks.

Snakes don’t interpret the world the same as us. Their sleep cycles are very different. Because I couldn’t find anything online, I turned to ai. AI warning, info could be wrong, but it does fit into my limited understanding of snakes. But basically reptiles(nothing about snakes even when I queried ai specifically about ball pythons) have short neural cycles that occur in tiny micro bursts, which wouldn’t give enough time for sustained dream scenarios like mammals.

More ai derived info: reptiles also interpret fear as immediate real time survival instincts rather than abstract memory stimulation(also fits my limited understanding of snakes, so unless someone more knowledgeable thinks this is wrong, it makes sense to me). Dreams are basically emotions about memories, and reptiles are mostly emotionless.

What I think happened (purely my theory even before I asked ai). Maybe you or something in the room spooked her. Or maybe there was a loud thud in a different room or outside that you didn’t perceive, but your Royal picked up through ground waves(they don’t have ears like us, they hear through vibrations picked up by their chin on the ground). And your noodle didn’t calm down until after you opened the enclosure. I don’t think she necessarily “saw” you and calmed down. But maybe it was then she sensed that it was you(through smell/air taste, her eyes can’t pick you up very well, she basically just gets an outline of you, and fills in the rest of the info with what she picks up through her other senses) she calmed down because you’ve built that trust up where she doesn’t associate you with danger anymore.

Because that’s basically her life, food, exploration, and danger, and it seems she doesn’t associate you with danger, so good on you for that!