Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, most dogs and cats are never late for a meal. They know exactly where to be at the same time every day. They also know their owner's schedules, and, like clockwork, will join you in or even anticipate your daily movements, like waiting by the door when you usually get home from work, or
complaining if it's bedtime and you're still up. When you witness this behavior, you might assume that your pet has a sophisticated understanding of time, But what is time really like for a dog or cat. To understand how animals perceive time, we first need to understand how humans perceive time. Arguably, each person experiences the passing of time in different ways at different times. Albert Einstein once explained the principle of relativity by saying, when a man sits with a pretty
girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. Even though the experience of time is relative for every individual, all humans probably think about time in similar ways. For instance, our memories are inextricably tied to how we understand the passing of time. Our ability to remember events in a particular order plays a large part in our perception of time.
We're also able to predict things not in a psychic way. Each of us makes educated assumptions about certain events in the future, even as simple as assuming that the sun will come up tomorrow. These abilities have important implications. For instance, memory and prediction allow us to have a sense of continuity of personal history and self awareness. So do dogs,
Cats and other animals have the same abilities. If you climbed inside of a dog's mind, would you be presented with the memory of eating a raw hide bone earlier this morning. Research on how dogs and cats in particularly perceived time is limited, but we can learn more about it when we look at the extensive research that's been done with other animals, such as broad birds and primates. Animal cognition researcher William Roberts has made some remarkable conclusions
regarding animal memories and anticipation. He says that animals are stuck in time. By this, he means that without the sophisticated abilities it takes to perceive time, like truly forming memories, animals only live in the present. Roberts thinks animals are stuck in time because they can't mentally time travel backward or forward. Humans can consciously and willfully think back to specific memories and anticipate new events. Animals cannot, too many.
This might seem like a faulty theory. After all, can't we train animals and doesn't this training depend on animals own memories? Well, not necessarily, at least not in the way we usually think of memories. According to Roberts, animals might be trained to do things in the same way that young children are trained to do things. According to studies with children, by the age of four, kids have learned lots of things crawling, walking, but without them toll
ability to remember where or how they learned them. In other words, they don't have the power of episodic memory, or the ability to remember particular events in the past. A dog can know how to respond to the command sit without having a memory of the specific event in which it learned that command. And that's not all that's at work in a dog or cat's brain to help it, for example, impeccably predict the arrival of its owner. Internal
biological rhythms also play their part. According to Robert's researchers have discovered from experiments on pigeons that an internal clock allowed the birds to learn where and when food would be available. Similarly, our furry friends might use circadian oscillators, that is, daily fluctuations of hormones, body temperature, and neural activity to know when food is likely to hit the
bowl or when owners are likely to return home. Instead of remembering how much time passes between meals or what time meals are given, dogs and cats react to a biological state that they reach at a particular time of day, and they react the same way at the same time every day to the stimulus. So if they can't store memories like humans can, can they plan for the future. In his work, Roberts argues that time is a human construction created to keep track of such things as days
and significant events. A timekeeping devices from sundials and precise clocks to smartphones have revolutionized how humans perceived time, and animals don't have the advantage of these tools. Human beings have two important abilities to help us understand time. We are able to remember a sequence of events, and we are able to anticipate future needs or events. Studies show that animals may have these abilities, but to a lesser extent.
Scientists have tested animals working memories and reference memories, that is, their short term and long term memory, respectively. They did this to see how well the animals recall sequences of events. In working memory tests, for example, pigeons or primates have been encouraged to remember a sequence well enough to pick or pick it in the right order again to get a reward. The animals did fairly well at these tasks,
but their memory faded fast. Roberts thinks that they were probably learning going from weakest memory to strongest memory, rather than actually learning or remembering a sequence. Other researchers found that pigeons and monkeys performed well at reference memory tests, in which they needed to remember a sequence after a delay between learning and testing, but it took extensive training for the animals to learn these sequences, suggesting to Roberts
that the ability did not come naturally to them. From these tests, it seems that animals would perceive time differently from humans, who have a relatively reliable and sophisticated memory of a sequence of events. In addition, animals don't seem to anticipate future needs and rewards very well, suggesting to researchers that they don't have a concept of the future. For instance, when given the choice, pigeons and rats shows
a smaller immediate reward over a larger future reward. In one test, researchers presented primates with a choice between one banana and two bananas. Understandably, they chose to bananas consistently. However, as the supply of the two choices got larger, they started showing less of a preference. They weren't hungry enough at that moment to eat ten bananas, so they chose
five bananas about half the time. Roberts concludes from these experiments that these animals sought to satisfy immediate hunger needs and weren't planning for future hunger. This is very unlike humans, who often use reason and forethought to anticipate future needs, from packing a snack and a drink for later to investing in a retirement plan. So what about squirrels and other animals that hoard food for the impending winter months.
That behavior seems to imply that the animals anticipate future needs, but maybe that's not it studies have found that animals don't stop hoarding even when their supplies disappear over and over again. This could mean that the animals don't understand why they hoard, what it means for their future, or in what the future is. They simply do it out of instinct. Humans, on the other hand, understand their preparations and will quickly change strategies when their plans go awry.
If animals are stuck in time, as Robert suggests, this could mean that understanding time is uniquely and fundamentally human. Today's episode was written by Jane McGrath and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this a lot of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio or more podcasts. My Heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.