To Sleep, Perchance to Feed the Cat

To Sleep, Perchance to Feed the Cat

We all have an anecdote or two about real-life sensations—the smell of cooking food, the noise of thunderstorms, or the pressure of a full bladder—that made appearances in our dreams. It’s not that rare for external stimuli, when they happen to occur during dream-producing REM sleep, to be incorporated into dream content. Becca Krock discusses one such case, involving dreams, drums, and an impatient cat.

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Tiger tiger, burning bright: the retinal specializations that cause glowing eyes

Tiger tiger, burning bright: the retinal specializations that cause glowing eyes

Bobcats like to chase laser pointers. At least, Moses the bobcat, of Big Cat Rescue, does. As entertaining as I found the sight of a bobcat pouncing at a glowing red dot (which is to say, very), I was more struck by the sight of the eyes, luminous in the darkness. Like any proper biologist, I googled “feline eye glowing”. Allow me to introduce the tapetum lucidum a layer of highly reflective tissue found behind the retina of many vertebrate species that provides, essentially, a second chance at photon detection.

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