Can Dogs Perceive Time? - Part 1

Researcher William Roberts argued back with an explanation about an animal's way of thinking of memories. According to Roberts animals do think of memories at least in the way human does. Roberts explained that "animals might be trained to do things in the same way young children are trained to do things." Just as 4-month kids learn crawling, but without the mental ability to remember where or how they learned how to crawl, animals in the same way do not have the ability of episodic memory, or the ability to remember particular events in the past. Roberts says, "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."

But if this be the case actually, then how can your dog predict your arrival time? How can your dog predict that a day is a Sunday, and your are going to take him for a drive? Researcher William Roberts has answers to questions like theses as well! According to his study on how animals perceive time, internal biological rhythms also play immensely important part. Experiments on pigeons have helped researchers conclude that an "internal clock" allows them to get a clue about when and where food would be available for them. In the same way Circadian Oscillators - daily fluctuations of hormones, body temperature and neural activities in dogs help them understand when its the time to get out in the lawn for when their owners will give them their dinner. Dogs cannot understand how much time have passed away after the last feed; they cannot understand that they are going to get the next food at 8 pm. Instead they react to a biological state that they come across at a specific time, which is determined by human through the sophisticated gadgets called clocks and watches. If your dog asks for food in the same way & at the same time each day, you should understand that he or she is reacting to a particular stimulus that is triggered by the biological state, which come across each day at the same time.

So if your dog cannot understand or perceive time, can they comprehend things or event that they might come across in the future? We will talk about this shortly. Meanwhile check out more about how dogs perceive time.

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