I haven’t had one in quite a while, but I used to have recurring dreams in which I could fly. But I could only lift off the ground if I concentrated hard enough. And I always flew at night, when people couldn’t see me. In these dreams I had these incredibly visual scenes of flying over darkened trees and buildings. In other dreams, I’m trying to solve some problem or get something right (without ever having success, of course). Then, when I wake (assuming I remember the dream), I feel like I’ve had that same scenario in numerous previous dreams.
The question is… did I really dream about those same scenarios in previous dreams, or do I just think I did? After all, dreams are snippets of things that have happened to you (or things you’ve imagined, such as flying) while you were awake. In other words, by definition, dreams should always seem kind of familiar. So, are recurring dreams actually recurring, or do they just seem to be recurring? As it turns out, according to the Academy of Sleep and Wellness, 60 to 75 percent of adults really do experience recurring dreams. And for whatever reason, recurring dreams are experienced more by women than by men. People report that these recurring dreams may take place over a span of weeks, or months, and sometimes throughout their entire life. Interestingly, the majority of recurring dreams are considered nightmares, involving unpleasant or frustrating situations, such as falling, losing your teeth, being chased by something, or being unprepared for an exam. Most of the articles I found contained tips for how to stop recurring dreams. Hmm… okay, I do have one recurring dream I wouldn’t mind stopping. It’s my teacher version of the exam dream mentioned above. It always involves me being unprepared for a class I must teach, and I find out the class is starting like, right now. I have this dream all the time, even though I’ve been retired from teaching for years. However, most of my recurring dreams are positive, even euphoric. The flying dream is an example. Another example is being outside somewhere, and the scenery is bizarrely beautiful, or I keep finding impossibly beautiful animals, such as snakes with rainbow colors. I don’t want advice on how to stop these recurring dreams, I want to advice on how to make them happen more often.
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Did you know the pronghorn (sometimes called the American antelope) is the fastest running animal in North America? Adults can run 55 miles per hours (88 km/hr). At only four days old, a pronghorn calf can outrun a human.
The pronghorn is not really an antelope, as antelopes are native to Africa, India, and Asia. People started calling pronghorns antelopes simply because they have a vague resemblance to some of the true antelopes. The closest living relatives of the pronghorn are giraffes and the okapi. Okay, so why are antelopes so incredibly fast? Partly because they live in open prairies where the only way to escape predators is running. But this doesn't explain why they are so much faster than other prairie mammals—white-tailed deer and mule deer have top speeds of only 35 mph (56 km/hr). And the pronghorn is far faster than the fastest living predators in North America. Why? One good explanation is that the pronghorn evolved alongside some of the fastest predators in North America that are now extinct, such as the two species of American cheetah. These two big cats went extinct about 16,000 years ago, but the pronghorn still exists and is still as fast as it needed to be to escape the American cheetahs. Pronghorns are slower than modern cheetahs (of Africa and Iran), but pronghorns can run at top speed for far longer, which probably allowed them to escape from American cheetahs most of the time. |
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