Sleep is a necessity for all of us. But as important as sleep is, scientists still haven’t been able to figure out why we dream. Many people believe that our dreams are visions that can be interpreted to real-life circumstances, while others believe it’s just a random by-product of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep that makes connections from things we see on a regular basis.
Photo: Kristina Vackova/Shutterstock
The Most Common Dreams That People Have Around the World
While your dreams might feel like a personalized experience, the truth is some dreams are seen in cultures around the world. Mornings.co.uk, a company dedicated to helping you sleep better, conducted a survey to see what people dream about based on Google search data.
The company broke dream down into a couple of categories: the human body, death, animals and nature, family, love and relationships, and money and other objects. On a global scale, the most commonly Googled dream was about snakes. Out of the 147 countries surveyed, one-third of the countries surveyed had snakes as the number one most commonly searched dream, and it had high ranks across the rest of the world. Snake dreams were particularly popular in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. For the rest of us, I guess those legless crawling animals just don’t sit right with us — snake dreams only snatch the number two spot in the US and the UK.
The most commonly searched dream in the the UK and US is about teeth falling out. The same goes for 9 other countries mostly located in northern countries. In all, about 81,000 people in the US monthly are trying to figure out why in the world they’re having dreams about their teeth falling out.
If you’re wondering whether you’re having similar dreams to the rest of the country, these are the top 10 dream searches monthly in the US:
- Teeth falling out — 81,000 monthly searches
- Snakes — 19,400 monthly searches
- Exes — 7,000 monthly searches
- Spiders — 16,000 monthly searches
- Vacations — 14,000 monthly searches
- Being chased — 9,600 monthly searches
- Wedding — 9,200 monthly searches
- Flies — 8,600 monthly searches
- Sex — 8,400 monthly searches
- Bears — 8,300 monthly searches
So the next time you’re having a weird dream about snakes, exes, or your teeth falling out — turns out you’re not alone. And if you’re really worried about it, maybe try a sleep vacation. 