Posted on 04/07/2008 2:39:16 PM PDT by blam
Animals Are 'Stuck In Time' With Little Idea Of Past Or Future, Study Suggests
New research indicates that rats are able to keep track of how much time has passed since they discovered a piece of cheese, be it a little or a lot of time, but they don't actually form memories of when the discovery occurred. That is, the rats can't place the memories in time. (Credit: iStockphoto/Maria Bibikova)
ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2008) — Dog owners, who have noticed that their four-legged friend seem equally delighted to see them after five minutes away as five hours, may wonder if animals can tell when time passes. Newly published research from The University of Western Ontario may bring us closer to answering that very question.
William Roberts and his colleagues in Western’s Psychology Department found that rats are able to keep track of how much time has passed since they discovered a piece of cheese, be it a little or a lot, but they don’t actually form memories of when the discovery occurred. That is, the rats can’t place the memories in time.
The research team, led by Roberts, designed an experiment in which rats visited the ‘arms’ of a maze at different times of day. Some arms contained moderately desirable food pellets, and one arm contained a highly desirable piece of cheese. Rats were later returned to the maze with the cheese removed on certain trials and with the cheese replaced with a pellet on others.
All told, three groups of rats were tested in the research using three varying cues: when, how long ago or when plus how long ago.
Only the cue of how long ago food was encountered was used successfully by the rats.
These results, the researchers say, suggest that episodic-like memory in rats is qualitatively different from human episodic memory, which involves retention of the point in past time when an event occurred.
"The rats remember whether they did something, such as hoarded food a few hours or five days ago,” explained Roberts. “The more time that has passed, the weaker the memory may be. Rats may learn to follow different courses of action using weak and strong memory traces as cues, thus responding differently depending on how long ago an event occurred. However, they do not remember that the event occurred at a specific point in past time.”
Previous studies have suggested that rats and scrub jays (a relative of the crow and the blue jay) appear to remember storing or discovering various foods, but it hasn’t been clear whether the animals were remembering exactly when these events happened or how much time had elapsed.
“This research,” said Roberts, “supports the theory I introduced that animals are stuck in time, with no sense of time extending into the past or future.”
The results of the research, entitled “Episodic-Like Memory in Rats: Is it Based on When or How Long Ago,” appear in the journal Science, April 4, 2008.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Western Ontario.
He wakes me up, every night without fail....
and don't even start with Annable my cat who use to wake me up at 5 so I could watch her eat her breakfast.
“However, they do not remember that the event occurred at a specific point in past time.”
After someone went to all that trouble creating that little rat calendar, you’d think they’d make notes or something.
I came home from work a little while ago, and my dogs acted as if we’d been separated for weeks; all three of them barking, jumping, vigorous tail wagging, and howling. A grand reunion! I then ran to the store, which is less than 3 minutes away, and returned after picking up one item. Again they greeted me with the same routine. It never fails.
The dogs of a friend of mine quickly learned what “a walk” was and would go insane with excitement whenever they heard that word. To alleviate the insanity, my friend began using the code “W” to indicate a walk. Sure enough, those dogs learned what a “W” was and drove my friends crazy until they came up with yet another code word: “Two U’s” That was the last I heard of it, but I’ll bet those dogs broke that code as well.
This also applies to liberals.
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My cats are stuck in dinner time.
Way too much time on their hands.
Maybe they just need watches.
The gravitas of this scientific study matches that of the bulk of Global Warming scientific work.
My dogs seem to have no sense of time. It’s always time to get up and eat, it’s always time to go outside and chase whatever might come near the yard, it’s always time to get petted or brushed, etc.
I blame myself. I wake up any time of the day or night myself.
If I come back for something five minutes after I’ve left, though, they don’t greet me. They know I’m leaving again. And they know when I’m going “out” by how I dress (if I put on makeup, I’m leaving).
They are wonderful dogs, though...The mastiff acts sort of like a cat—you know how cats always hesitate half in or half out of the door? The mastiff does that. Also rubs against me, like a cat.
He may know when Friday is, though—that’s the morning I don’t eat meat at breakfast. Instead, he knows it will be a tuna sandwich for him, or grilled cheese, or even shrimp, and those are his favorite foods.
Someone sent me an e-mail which said, “If you ever wonder if your wife or your dog loves you more, just lock both of them in the car’s trunk for about an hour. When you unlock the trunk, you’ll quickly learn which one loves you more.”
Few of such animal assumption hold up under the scrutiny of even amateurs. This is because their experiments are contrived, based on too many variables and have a subjective outcome.
Right now, science has no good description of the electro-chemical mechanism for memory at all, much less its organization and recall.
Ironically, the rather primitive descriptions of memory as short, medium, and long term seem to be pretty accurate based on neurological dysfunction in humans. That is, people can be stripped of their medium and long term memory, or they may lose their short and medium term memories, yet retain their long term, etc. This implies that they are either different process or in different parts of the brain.
Senses also matter a great deal. For example, for humans, are sense of smell provides our best and most accurate memory retention, people often remembering unique smells, not smelled for 50 or more years. However, other sensory input is exceptionally brief and retention beyond short term is very uncommon.
Quality of memories is also a big variable. People, at least, have a “memory refresh” ability that reemphasizes a very limited set of memories endlessly, yet its accuracy is terrible, as people re-write their memories in amazing ways, and with added and exaggerated emphasis and access.
With this level of complexity, it is no wonder that we have no clue what animals are thinking.
Same with my cat. The laser pointer has a jingly keychain attachment, and no matter how quietly I attempt to pick it up, the cat comes hurtling over and starts inspecting the floor like mad. Without fail.
Of course, the same thing happens when I open the food container. Then he sticks his head in the bowl before I even have a chance to add the food, and I have to nudge him aside.
Dogs also have DPS, the doggy positioning system. This works by a combination of urine markers and memory. My husky remembers every single place he ever almost caught a mouse or a squirrel, and he checks all of them for quite some time after the excitement. I know that it's more than smell, because he drags me to all those places on his usual circuit even when we are upwind.
the author seems to suggest that animals remember things but don’t project into the future, i.e. your dog knows that every day at 6am he gets a treat, but does not anticipate tomorrow and the day after. Kind of like the first few sequences in Ground hog day.
How does my daughter's cat always know when it's time for the kids to get home - and gets up and goes to wait at the door? How do wild animals - oh, baloney. What a bunch of hog-wash.
Our dogs are the same. Somehow though, they do have a sense about when my husband is due home from work. They start to sit at the front window around 4:30 and they wait there till he gets home, usually between 5 and 6.
The saddest thing is when he’s gone for an overnight trip, we have one dog that will stay at the window till 2 in the morning, watching every car that comes down the road, thinking it’s going to be him. She usually gives up around 2 and goes to bed. The other dogs don’t have the same loyalty, or maybe it’s perserverance.
I know this is simply not true. My old dog used to crawl on the bed looking out the window every day between 4 and 5 waiting for my mom to get home. When my dad was gone for a week and picked him up and brought him home, my dog was outside and ran up to my side of the door waiting for me to get out. But when he saw my dad, he began jumping up and down and running around the car nonstop.
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