Many pet owners claim that their animals know with great precision when it's time to go for dinner or a walk, or when a family member is coming home. Are dogs just very good at guessing or do they really understand and keep track of time? "I'm not sure that anyone has really studied the understanding of time in dogs, but what seems to be a general sense of time," says Dr. Chloe Wynn, a canine cognitive behavioral psychologist at Arizona State University.
The time of day is on any species that has been studied. In fact, a review and research done on the subject by psychologist William Roberts of the University of Western Ontario suggests that there is ample evidence that many animals perceive time in some way. "They can learn to go to a certain place at a time to eat," he writes. And "they can accurately learn short intervals of an external stimulus". For example, oystercatcher birds that feed on soft fish and crustaceans only for a short period of time each day (at the time of low tide in a certain area). The scientists observed that they returned to the feeding area at exactly the right time each day. At the same time, other researchers noticed that the pigeons went to certain parts of a university every day during lunch to feed on the students' leftovers. Meanwhile, pets have also been shown to be able to understand and track time.
As PetMD previously reported, the cats were trained to eat from one or two bowls before leaving the cage based on how long they were kept in the cage, and were able to tell the difference between intervals of 5, 8, Show 10 and 20 seconds. The researchers believe that this practice means that cats "have an internal clock that is responsible for checking when events occur." In other studies, dogs were left alone at home for half an hour or two hours. The researchers showed that dogs who were home alone for half an hour showed less interest in their owners (through tail wagging, attention-seeking behavior, or overall energy) than those who were alone for two hours, so they had a better overall understanding of the situation. How long their owners have been unavailable.
How do dogs track and understand time?
Dogs don't have wristwatches and don't keep daily schedules in their notebooks, so how do they track the passage of time? Scientists have several ideas, firstly, that animals and other living things have an internal physiological clock called circadian rhythm, which is a period of approximately 24 hours, and in their physiological process, there are signs such as sunrise, light and dark. They react. Instead of knowing what time meals are served or having the exact time in their mind using the ticking clock, dogs may have a sense of time using the rhythm of day and night, so that respond to a physiological process at a specific time in connection with a specific event such as eating dinner.
Also, "animals may use markers such as the sun's position in the sky to tell time in their daily lives." Dogs can also pick up on certain social cues that tell them something is going on, Wayne says. He says: "Dogs watch and pay attention to all the clues that happen and relate these clues to doing something." These signs don't necessarily tell them when it is, but they use those clues to predict that an important event is near. Next, an interesting idea proposed by dog cognition researcher, Alexandra Horowitz, published in her latest book as "Being a Dog". He says that dogs may somehow smell time.
Because a dog's sense of smell is so strong, and different odors come and go in the house and move throughout the day, dogs may use the presence, absence, or strength of a particular scent to keep track of time. and find out what has happened or how likely an event is in the near future. If you regularly feed your dog at certain times or come home at a certain time every day, the dog may determine the time of the next meal or the time of entry to your home based on the strength of the smell in its bowl or the persistence of its owner's smell. Identify in front of the entrance door. When it comes to longer pursuits, dogs and other animals may be less accurate. Just as they might use the physiological system of daily rhythms to tell time during a day, Roberts thinks they could also use diurnal cycles to understand longer periods of time. "Although humans keep important events by assigning dates and calendars, it is difficult to see how animals could do this without the technological devices of our time," he says. Of course, it is true that dogs can recognize dinner and lunch time, but don't expect them to remember Christmas Day or their birthday.
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