It's the middle of a Bank Holiday weekend, either sleepy or vigorously active depending on the calibre of your cuticles, but some of us remain at our post doing what we can to bring you the most urgent and the best of debate in the public domain.
Cue yours truly and the vital question of whether animals really sleep. To many of us it appears perfectly obvious that animals sleep, but there are sceptics who ask 'How do you know they sleep? They may just look as if they're (doing what we call) sleeping.' These sceptics, being sceptics - who will accept nothing without hard proof - also do not take it for granted that animals eat. 'Sure,' one of them said, 'it looks as if your dog is eating; but maybe that eating-like activity is something else for him.'
I turned to this man's colleague, who was in the process of blindfolding a kangaroo to test whether this would impair what we call the kangaroo's vision, and asked her - the colleague, not the kangaroo - if she shared his scepticism. 'Indeed I do,' she assured me. 'My major project just at the moment is to determine whether people who play the piano are playing the piano when that is what they appear to be doing.' I went home confused and had a long discussion with my cat, who was more than confused - she was dismayed.
