Does the dog have the concept of time?

We share many moments with our canine companions, and the issue of their awareness of the passage of time is of particular interest to owners concerned about their pet’s well-being. When we work and can’t bring them into our office, we worry about their ability to feel and manage loneliness and absence. This awareness of the notion of time, although different from our human conception, exists in dogs and many mammals. Related to memory, it allows the animal to survive to feed, reproduce, escape from danger. The dog’s different memories as well as self-awareness contribute to a notion of time that is different from ours, but very real.

The dog’s memoir

Just like in humans, the dog has different memories that allow it to survive, feed and reproduce.

sensory memory

If in man the perceptive memory is based without distinction on the five senses, touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell, in our four-legged companions it is above all the sense of smell that prevails among the five senses of the dog. It is through smells and the association with a positive or negative emotion that the dog works on his short-term memory.

short-term memory

It is this memory that allows him to remember, for 2 minutes, where he put the bone, where the neighbor’s cat is hiding. Beyond this period of time, the information disappears. That’s why it is strongly discouraged to scold the animal when stupidity is not caught in the act. He will fully understand and feel your anger, but will find himself unable to relate it to his action. This first stage of memorization will give rise to long-term memory if the information is worth keeping.

long-term memory in dogs

Composed of implicit and explicit memory, the latter aims to store information for longer periods of time. The dog can therefore “remember” a positive or negative emotion associated with a smell for several days, weeks, months or years. However, if we have the ability to dissociate memories and emotions, it is not the case of the dog who will be able to associate a brutal master with all mankind or consider all congeners as potential dangers. He could therefore present serious socialization problems as a result of mistreatment.

The implicit memory it is procedural. It allows the animal to use its natural abilities such as walking without thinking about it. Likewise, the working dog or athlete will mobilize the acquisition of motor skills necessary to look for people, track, assist people with disabilities without even thinking about it.

The explicit memory it requires self-awareness. We have long believed that the dog has no episodic memory. However, Claudia Fuggaza’s study published in 2016 showed that the dog was able to mentally rewind to remember details of an event. The same goes for this other study conducted by Fujita’s team at Kyoto University. Unlike other animals such as the jay which hides food to find it later, the notion of “when” does not seem to be present in our dogs. In fact, episodic memory is considered to be based on notions of “What, Where, and When.” If the dogs in the Kyoto experiment were able to remember the information – the what – and the storage place of the food – the where – the delay between the two phases of the experiment of only 20 minutes does not allow us not to confirm the temporality of the memorization. The dog also has a semantic memory which allows him to associate information and meaning of his lived experiences. It is also what allows him, after a learning phrase, to connect the gesture or voice to an action such as the order to lie down or sit down.

Sensory experiences and their recording in his memory offer our four-legged friend awareness of the passage of time.

A perception of time very different from ours

Live in the present

Of course, our dog doesn’t conceptualize time. No need to tell him what time we leave or return. Although he is aware of your absence, your dog will not watch the clock go by. His perception of time is rooted in the present moment. He cannot, unlike us, travel into the past or imagine the future. In the current state of scientific knowledge, we have no evidence that the animal can consciously remember, in the same way as a human being, past events. Their memory would allow them to perform the requested action just because they know a reward is involved. The awareness of time developed by our pets would therefore be based above all on the survival instinct to:

• Take care of the scope. Too long absence could lead to the death of its offspring due to lack of care and surveillance in the face of predators.
• Find and hide food. The animal is aware that the food will not necessarily still be there tomorrow. Hiding it and then having a chance to find it increases the dog’s chances of survival. However, if the gray-headed marten stores and waits for the fruit to ripen to return for it, there’s no evidence that our pooches have memorized their bone’s hiding place. Blame it on their highly developed talent.
• Connecting temporalities, behaviors and consequences would allow animals not to reproduce a situation dangerous for their survival. In the dog, the reward granted after the commanded action allows linking action and consequence.

While some animals like the marten project themselves into the future waiting for the stored fruit to ripen before returning to taste it, scientists have not yet proven that the dog is able to find the bone buried in the animal using its memory rather than its his inspiration.

The dog’s landmarks over time

The present moment remains the first point of reference of time for our canine friend. To do this it relies on:

• Its circadian cycle. The fluctuations of hormones, temperature and neuronal activity are linked to the rotation of our planet Earth and the alternation of day and night. Hunger, the desire to play or to rest lead the dog in a temporality of daily needs.
• Daily family routines. Many scorekeepers mark our days and those of our four-legged friends. It then responds automatically to the cycle that we ourselves have established: the time to get up, eat and go for a walk. Many cues such as closing the door to signal our departure from work or putting on trainers for a walk give the pet a time mark.
• The smells. With our little dog, almost everything goes through the truffle. Smell builds the dog’s memory. The concentration and intensity of certain odors or their reduction contribute to his notion of passing time. The odorous molecules we release increase when we get home and allow the animal to “predict” our arrival.

An area of ​​our pooch’s brain encodes time

It was through the study conducted by Northwestern University in Illinois that it was shown that the temporal lobe of their brain, the medial entorhinal cortex, was capable of encoding time. Associated with memory and navigation, a set of neurons fire when the dog expects a reward, for example. These timing cells do not activate when your dog is playing or sniffing his environment.

Another scientific experiment has shed light on the dog’s ability to perceive the duration of its owner’s absence. Left alone for 30 minutes, 2 or 4 hours, the test revealed that if the puppy’s behavior did not vary during the duration of the separation, the intensity of the reunion was greater when the separation lasted 2 or 4 hours. However, the study does not provide evidence that the animal quantifies the duration of absence. It should be noted that the 25 dogs that participated in this study did not suffer from separation anxiety.

If the notion of time exists for our pooches, it still remains different from our own perception. It can thus locate itself in the day, “remember” past events and encode time. It can also sense if you’re away for a long time. However, his short-term memory doesn’t allow him to associate your anger when you find your sofa gnawed or your shoes chewed with this past action. It is therefore important to prepare the dog for these moments of solitude by learning from an early age to allow him to better bear the wait and prevent him from developing separation anxiety.

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