The human-octopus most recent common ancestor was an ancient organism from hundreds of million years ago. It would have been one of the earlier organisms to have bilateral symmetry and an embryonic development characterized by the three germ layers we have today.
If you have a dog and have been to the aquarium you're likely to already intuit that octopuses do something that looks a lot like sleeping and that animals all the way down the family tree have periods of quiet and active sleep as well. The researchers here use a combination of observational techniques to suggest that the octopus sleep states observed are analogous to sleep in the vertebrate.
The research paper as published does not explicitly mention dreaming, rather it is one of a host of processes implied when the researchers analogize the 'active sleep' behavior observed in the octopus to animal REM sleep patterns. The conclusion spells out the possible connection to the 'metabolic detoxification' and 'cognitive processing' functions of vertebrate REM sleep but does not state them definitively.
The general media news article and the research paper have some slight differences because of their different intended audiences, but litigating that divide is best left to those already doing it: the esteemed scholars of the Dunning-Krueger Institute at Wikipedia University.
If you have a dog and have been to the aquarium you're likely to already intuit that octopuses do something that looks a lot like sleeping and that animals all the way down the family tree have periods of quiet and active sleep as well. The researchers here use a combination of observational techniques to suggest that the octopus sleep states observed are analogous to sleep in the vertebrate.
The research paper as published does not explicitly mention dreaming, rather it is one of a host of processes implied when the researchers analogize the 'active sleep' behavior observed in the octopus to animal REM sleep patterns. The conclusion spells out the possible connection to the 'metabolic detoxification' and 'cognitive processing' functions of vertebrate REM sleep but does not state them definitively.
The general media news article and the research paper have some slight differences because of their different intended audiences, but litigating that divide is best left to those already doing it: the esteemed scholars of the Dunning-Krueger Institute at Wikipedia University.