How do dogs perceive time?

A dog that knows exactly when its owners will arrive home every day seems to have a human perception of time, but in fact, they perceive time very differently than we do. Find out more about how dogs view time in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Chuck Bryant Chuck. Yes,

(00:22):
nice Chuck. We'll get to that in a second. Again,
that's awesome. Chuck's barking because this is stuff you should know.
And this particular stuff you should know is entitled how
do dogs perceive time? And I said in dog language
just then, I don't perceive time. That is up for debate,
my friend, up for vigorous debate. All right, So chuck um,

(00:46):
let me let me do a little intro here, a
little lead in segway whatever spoiled your parade? There? What
do we call him these days? What are we what segways?
Lead ins intros intro schmickls um Chuck. About a year ago,
well a year ago this month, Paris, well, France, Paris,
France made history, legal history. Uh, they actually used a

(01:11):
dog as a witness in a criminal case. Did they
get the dog to bark at someone? Wow? I kid you,
not like an intruder at the very least, and I
hope I'm not in Bangladeshi newspaper here, um, because I
found it, uh in the Daily Mail, which is not
known for satire, but it's all. It can be known
for poor reporting from time to time. So you may

(01:32):
have egg on your face soon we'll find out. Um.
But there was a dog named Scooby that was brought
into a doesn't I should afford to this article? Um?
There was a dog named Scooby that was brought into
a murder case or a hearing to see if there
was enough evidence to try a man for murder for

(01:55):
something that was ruled a suicide. And the dog barked
furiously at the alleged perpetrator and they gave him a
Scooby snack. Yeah, so that was the last I heard.
It was from a year ago, but there was some
concern over whether the dog's memory would serve it or
not because it had been two and a half years
since the incident. Okay, that makes sense, and that's kind

(02:18):
of key to how dogs may or may not perceive time.
The best I could come up with that great? Thanks?
So um what that what that betrays is a sense
by at least the reporter and the courts in Paris
that dogs have a memory, that they they if they

(02:38):
have a memory, then they should be able to perceive time. Right, Chuck,
let's talk about this. What is time? Well, you know
my whole deal with time, I've said it before. What
a little time is just abstract numbers on a calendar
and and hands on a watch, aren't time? Well, yeah, no,
what you're talking about is the human constructive time. Yes,

(03:00):
based on twenty four hours, which all kind of arbitrary
seven days in a week. There, well, not necessarily. Here's why. Uh,
it was actually kind of ingenious that we should come
up with the twenty four hour day. Because we have
these things called circadian oscillators, which are the well they're

(03:20):
the fluctuators in our circadian rhythm, which is what makes
us fall asleep at night, wake up in the morning,
get hungry at certain times. Neural activity, right, the neural
activity and the hormones um our reactions to things like
changes in temperature that are on a daily basis. Um
things like um the changes in natural light. Right, So

(03:44):
our our reactions to these are circadian oscillators. And if
you put them all together, like sleeping at night and
and um waking up in the morning, that's our circadian rhythm.
But the circadian clocks actually exist on about a twenty
four hour period since then. So but like you said,
days on the calendar and all that, that's that is

(04:04):
a human construct. Yeah, So what we're trying to get
to the bottom of is whether or not dogs can
perceive this not necessarily the human construct of time, but
of time in and of itself, which is essentially a
past present in future exactly. And I know that one
thing that we will talk about, and maybe we'll talk
about right now is you have three dogs? Do you

(04:26):
have any dogs? I have two dogs? What shut up?
I have two dogs, and I'm actually fostering two feral
puppy rescues. What you know, So right now, if you
want to get rid of those two dogs, because we
could get rid of them like that if we plug
this on this UM, on this podcast, we're kind of
picky about who we give them to. Okay, well, how
about this if you're not a creep and you love
dogs and you live in the East Lake area, yeah, Atlanta,

(04:48):
to send us an email if you want one of
Chuck's puppies. Very cute. Yeah, So anyway, if your dogs
or anything like my dogs, they and actually my cats too,
they know when the food bell is going to ring. Sure,
actually they start. Emily calls it food abuse. They start
the food abuse typically about an hour and a half
before they typically get fed every afternoon and in the morning.

(05:10):
We feed them pretty much straight away in the morning,
so they know. They know then. But my dog Lucy
dude comes in the room and looks at you with
her head cocked, stamps on the floor with her feet
and goes m And I'm waiting her for her literally
to one day say feed me one day. I told
Emily if she did that one day, I would be
surprised for about a second. So, chuck, here is where

(05:33):
we reached the bone of contention. Sorry for that pun.
I'm not Jonathan's strickling your dog to do the same
thing though soon right. Well, no, my my dogs are
fed constantly. They always have food. They for some reason
I'd lucked out, and they just eat it, eat whenever
they want, whenever. I can't imagine that. It's pretty cool
dogs eat their food like it's the first time they've
ever been fed before. My dogs, they're pretty laid back

(05:55):
when it comes to stuff like that. Are they fat? No? Really, no,
they're they're healthier than I am. Well, they're healthier than
a lot of people I know. No, they're very They
regulate their food and take on their own It's weird,
but but I know what you're talking about. So the
question is this, do your dogs no, based on past

(06:19):
experience that food is coming at a certain time of day,
not necessarily like five thirty pm, but say as far
as the dog's concerned, when sun is low and sky
over there, they're They're like Italians playing Native Americans. What

(06:39):
do you think, I'm so um or? Is it a
circadian oscillator? Well, that's the circadian oscillator. It could be, yeah,
it could be. What what that is is you're they're
using their memories of past experiences to predict the future,
which is episodic memory, which is our construction of time.
Or is this semantic memory, which is totally different but related.

(07:05):
Do you want me to go into this because this
is outside research, I have no choice. Then semantic memory
is all right, Chuck. Let's say that you have brain
damage to your frontal lobe, which is where your episodic
memory is uh is located. That's the region that controls
episodic memory, which is learning from experience. Right. Um, you

(07:27):
could conceivably learn how to play chess right, right, but
you won't remember where you learn how to play chess. Right.
Much like, uh, they say a baby learned how to
walk and talk, but they don't remember that day you
taught me how to walk, right. They don't have to
relearn crawling or walking or talk on a day to

(07:48):
day basis, right, because they learned it. And that's semantic memory.
That's like facts and rules and and and possibly motor
movements or whatever. Or you know, if I run into
this wall, it's going to hurt my face because I'm crawling,
But they don't remember, you know, somebody teaching them like,
come crawl to me that kind of thing, right, So yeah,

(08:08):
that's semantic memory. Episodic memory would be like, um, what
did you have for breakfast this morning? Had a fruit smoothie?
You had a fruit smoothie? Remember what the light looked like?
I remember what what smelled like. That is precisely episodic memory.
And uh, I should probably give a shout out at
t RS and Tall, who I'm like just blatantly ripping

(08:29):
off right now. Um. The the chess example was one
of Zental's uh examples of semantic memory, and what you've
just said, um is almost word for word, uh, an
example of episodic memory. You said, you know you remember
these other details, whereas had you said, um, I had

(08:50):
I had a smoothie this morning, I must have because
I had a smoothie, Right, that would be well, not
the burping part, but if you always had it, then
that'd be were like semantic memories. So we reached the
question do dogs perceived time or are these reactions that
appear like they're there keeping track of time some way,

(09:13):
maybe through a circadian oscillator based on semantic memories. And
there's been a lot of studies that, not necessarily on dogs,
but on other animals. Right, Yeah, what's uh, what's this
crackpot's name? Roberts? No, what's this guy's name? Dr Roberts. Yeah,
I have to say I'm gonna take issue with Dr Roberts.
William Roberts. He's an animal cognition researcher. Right off the bat,

(09:35):
you're taking issue with that, it's that. Yeah, he did
some studies on pigeons and primates, to name a couple
and long term in short term memory as far as
remembering a sequence that they would I guess the pigeons
would peck it out and the primates would tap it
out and uh to get a reward. And they found
that they have pretty good short term memory for this

(09:57):
kind of thing, right, which is what that's working memory, right, yes,
but long term as reference memory, Yeah, but as far
as the reference goes, they couldn't remember it that well
if there was if there was a big break in between. Um.
Roberts actually wrote a very famous paper as far as
animal cognition goes, where he basically said that he concluded

(10:19):
animals are stuck in time. And I just made air
quotes for those of you out there listening in podcast land. Um,
and by stuck in timing means that they are they
live exclusively in the present that they don't have the
capacity for forming uh, long term episodic memory. Episodic is
the key word. It is very much. Because I know

(10:39):
at home you're saying, no, I taught my dog to
sit when she was one. That's not the same thing.
That's what we're talking about with the baby and learning
how to walk. Um. But that's that's not. There's a
lot of examples out there in nature that would kind
of um the lie Dr roberts idea that the animals

(11:00):
their dogs are stuck in time. Well, a good one
is squirrels foraging food store for the winner and doing
it year after year after year. Um. I believe Roberts
actually addressed that and says, but they continue hoarding even
when their stores inexplicably disappear, which I assume some researchers

(11:20):
went and stole squirrels nuts and then uh studied them
to see what they would do. I don't understand that
at all. I don't either. Seems like they would that
would make them want to hoard. Yeah, so I kind
of have an issue with that one a little bit,
but it's possible. I'm not entirely seeing that point all
the way. I don't see the point. I'm not quite
sure what what he meant there. But um, there's also

(11:41):
one about the bananas, right, Chuck. There's there were some
primates that were given choices between more or less bananas,
and predictably, at first, if you offered an ape one
banana or two bananas, they're gonna take the two bananas.
But they found that when they started increasing the number
of bananas, like ten compare to twenty, they would just
go for the tin bananas, they wouldn't he and he

(12:04):
thought this meant they can't, Uh, they have no concept
of the future, Like maybe I should take these bananas
because I might be hungry tomorrow right now. That's um
that I think Roberts fails to take into account social structure. Right. Uh.
We we know that we could use tim bananas for tomorrow,
but we also have things like um preservation techniques or

(12:26):
refrigeration available. That's what I thought. And if you go
back in time just a few thousand years ago, UM
to hunter gatherer societies or even hunter gatherer societies that
are around now, they don't store food at all. They
forage for what they need right then, and that's what
they eat. I would imagine that that would actually explain
a lot of the primate decisions. There's no real reason

(12:48):
to their society isn't set up on this idea that
I need more and more to protect myself in the
future exactly. I don't know that that necessarily means that
they don't have any concept of the future. I think
that there's all these other explanations out there, right, and
they made like one I was. When I read that,
the first thing I thought was, maybe they're not they've

(13:09):
never taken more than tin bananas in their life because
they've never needed to, so it doesn't even dawn on
them that that should be something they would do exactly.
I guess what we're saying, both of us around the
same page here. There are other explanations, and I think
one of the things I took from this article was that, uh,
Roberts found it conclusive that animals are stuck in time
by cherry picking some uh some studies here, and we

(13:31):
we kind of disagree with them. There's a lot of
other factors. I know that my dog Lucy is stuck
in time at five thirty pm every day because she's
always asking for the food. So I guess another problem.
It's entirely possible check that we're Our brains just aren't
big enough to uh they're not as big as Robert's brain. Maybe, Um,

(13:51):
did you ever hear that like goldfish have an eight
second memory span. I've never heard that, so I have
a right you have a goldfish and you have a
old fish here. Yeah, Molly, she's very cute his name, Molly.
I didn't know that interesting. UM, But having an episodic
memory makes it almost impossible to think about UM not

(14:13):
having one. So like, if a goldfish does have a
memory of eight seconds, does that mean that every eight
seconds all of its memories are purged, like getting rid
of the browser history in your computer? Um? Or as
new experiences come into the present, are older ones pushed
out after they hit this eight second maturity level? And
how how do they test that on a goldfish? Anyway?

(14:34):
Perfect chuck, perfect segue. Here's the biggest problem. Robert's position
is almost inherently species ist. You're familiar with this term, Ye,
this is a legitimate term. I'm not making this up. Animals.
Animals don't have souls. It's impossible for an like a
dog to be happy because that's the secondary emotions aren't

(14:57):
self aware enough. There's a competing explo nation for all
this UM. Species is tend to rely very strictly or
remain very strictly within the structure UM provided by the
scientific method and all his studies here, he probably came
out from that frame of mind. Sure right, UM, But
there's another way of looking at it, and that is

(15:17):
that humans simply haven't come up with tests that are
clever enough to get definitive proof that an animal can
experience happiness, or can or is aware of time, the future,
of the past, that kind of thing. You can take
that way too far, like after you know, test after
test after test that proves the opposite, you could still

(15:38):
conceivably say, well, there's a test out there that that
we haven't come up with yet that proves that they can. Um.
But I think that the testing that has been done
is very much below that threshold so far. I don't
think we have a clue, um what what animals are
capable of as far as consciousness, because because we have
such a loose grasp on our own consciousness, sure, and

(16:00):
we can't uh certainly can't delve into an animal's brain
and see what they think and they can't tell us anything.
I guarantee you one thing. I bet you. Dr Roberts
is not a dog owner, agreed, Agreed, because you have dogs, dude,
And I guarantee you we're going to get tons of
mail from people saying, are you kidding? My dog displays
emotion every day? And you know, I guess Caesar that

(16:22):
the dog whisperer might say, you know, that's you're putting
your human construct on the dogs. From my mind, yeah,
anthrow anthropomorphizing. Yeah, I don't know, man, my dog is
that they're both pretty emotional. Well yeah, anthropomorphizing is the
go to ammunition for species ists, and I don't want,
I don't mean to say that anybody who's saying like, no,

(16:43):
animals can't be happy because it's secondary emotion and they
lack that sense of self awareness that is required to
experience this, uh, secondary emotion is a species ist, But
the too often go hand in hand. And it's really
interesting that there's a line drawn right now between people
who think animals don't have a soul and people who

(17:03):
think animals can be happy and all the implications that
come with that. Jerry, I bet you think your dog
is a soul? Right, Jerry saying yeah, just gave the
sweetest face and nodded yes, yes, So, um, I feel
like chuck and I just opened a big old canned worms.
So we'll see how this plays out in the emails. Right,
If you want to read more about dogs perceiving, time

(17:25):
to answer the question. According to Roberts, no, dogs don't
perceive time times a human construct consisting of a past
president in future and dogs pretty much living the present.
Chuck and I don't necessarily agree with that one. Uh.
You can go on in type in dogs perceived time
in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Since I just said that, it means it's time for

(17:47):
a whole mess of listener mail. You're right, Josh, this
is uh We're just gonna call this muppet mail, and
we are gonna go on a little longer than usual
with our mail because the Muppet podcast, I think we
will all agree, um was sort of a ce change episode.

(18:08):
And plus we just want to see how how long
this background music actually goes for it, I know, I
mean we we literally got better response from the Muppet
Show episode than uh, anything we've ever done, I would say,
wouldn't you. Yeah, the Henson company twittered about it. Yeah,
Heather Henson, we should say. Our colleague and friend, Jonathan
Strickland of tech Stuff came his uh sister sister friends

(18:32):
who with Heather Henson, and it went viral thanks to him. Yeah,
that's awesome. So we got great response. It's clear that
everyone loves the Muppets and uh so I wanted to
go just through a few of these because I didn't
want to just do one um quickly before we start,
and we never do this, but a guy sent me
an email and I kind of touched a chord with me.

(18:52):
So I want to quickly give a shout out for
for Joe to Beth in Ellwood, Indiana and just wants
to say that he thinks that you are a pretty
cool chick. Beth, Chuck, are you playing matchmaker? Is that
why you're wearing nothing but a diaper and you have
those wings? And not saying but Beth and Elwood, Joe,
Joe thinks your cool chicken. So the week because she

(19:14):
actually sent us a alien han syndrome video which rocked cool.
That's good, I'll show it to you quick. A couple
of things that we didn't mention in corrections. First of all, Um,
I mistakenly refer to the Children's Television Workshop as the
Children's Television Network, so I goove that one you're thinking
of home shopping that kids. We did not mention every

(19:36):
Muppet movie. We did not mention every Muppet venture because
no want I want to halicitate on this. We did
that on purpose. First of all, we mentioned the three
that were in theatrical Elite release directed by Jim Henson. Yes,
and by first of all, I mean that's it right right.
So a lot of people said, how could you not
mention Muppets Christmas Carol? And we wanted to mention everything,

(19:58):
but we were just been sitting here reading things all
day long about the Dark Crystal and other Muppet ventures.
So we chose to only do the Hinson ones. Would
Crystal creeps out and that was Hinton too, because I
know people are gonna write and say that was Hinson,
but get over. Uh. We had a gun in. Peter
wrote in and he told us about the Muppet Whatnot Workshop. Yeah,

(20:20):
and um and uh, and you can go to New
York City and you could do it online. But I
looked and it's down right now. But it's just around
Christmas time or the holidays. No, they got bought out
by Toys r Us. I think, so that's down right now.
But you can still go to New York. You can
go to the Muppet Workshop and you can build your
own whatnot at Goldman says it costs about a hundred bucks.

(20:42):
And he sent me a picture of he and his
little cute daughter with her Muppet whatnot. So you want
to thank Peter for that? And actually I'm going on
and on, but Peter had one of the big food
and chow mustaches like me, Yeah, I'll tell you about this,
And I said, uh, very cool, Peter, thanks for sending this.
I said, it looks like you picked up a mustache
while you were there. And he wrote back and said, no,

(21:03):
I got that at the Sam Elliott. Uh Sam Elliott
Supply Center down the street or something like that, Peter. Um,
So that is all for the corrections. Now we have
a few emails. Um, Josh and Chuck had just listen
to how Muppets worked. I was excited to hear you
talk about it because you mentioned the costume designer from
Miss Piggie, who happens to be my aunt Callista. Oh

(21:26):
she uh. If you look up the Muppet movie you
can see her in the costume and war Dube department
on IMDb. She worked closely with Henson and I've actually
seen a picture of her with Jim Henson setting up
some Muppets and Emmett Hotter's jug band Christmas. She left
the Muppets, I think when Jim Henson died, but we
still see her once a year. That's from Sam and
Josh is in fact eating a Reese's cup. Uh onto

(21:50):
the next one. Hi, guys, I love your recent podcast.
I was listening and thought I would mention that Jim
Henson studied mumpetology at University of Maryland. I know this
because I went there, and there is a Jim Hinton
studies program, and it is our claim to fame. Um,
I didn't know he went to my school until I
went there. And there's actually a little a bitch statue.

(22:13):
It's a bench with Hinton sitting on it and Kermit
sitting on the back of the bench and they're kind
of holding hands. That is beyond It is very cute.
So and and she also says that, um, this is
from Lesia that they have the rights to. It ain't
easy being Green and Rainbow Connection. So their marching band
actually plays that the University of Maryland. Yeah, go turps,

(22:35):
moving on, man, listen to this background music, Chuck, I know,
I know, I know. We compared him up and showed
a thirty rock and Phil of Lyndon Washington has this
to say, Um, I was trying to imagine Sesame Street
would look like in real life. Two little boys getting
their own apartment, A giant bird that sleeps behind garbage cans,

(22:55):
a few scattered, seemingly sensible adults who really have no
jobs and nothing else to do. No Mr Hooper at
a story. Finally, it hit me while working my job
as a special led classroom assistant. It is one big,
government operated group home facility for special needs children. Adults
think about it. Bert displays classic Asperger syndrome. They share

(23:15):
a bedroom, uh, and obviously have some adults taking care
of the rest of their house. Oscar is schizophrenic with
his mood swings, and a worm is a best friend
as his big bird with his imaginary friend. Uh is
it snepe lupocus? And uh tell me Grover's not dealing
with severe a d h D and cookie monster from
manic bipolar tendencies. And the jobless adults Gordon, Susan and

(23:37):
Bob so that's from Phil are the jobless adults the caregivers?
He says her jobless adults. I've got two more. Uh.
Jerry's laughing at how long this is going, but I
warned her I was listening to your fantastic podcast and
I had to write in I am getting married at
the Hinton sound stage next year. That's so cool. Uh.

(23:59):
He and his wife to be toward the sound stage.
It was like being behind the scenes of the Muppet Show.
We're honored as the first wedding ever to be hosted there.
And I asked him a running backs, like, dude, what's
the hook up? You know? He had none. He just asked, Huh.
They rented out to people apparently for things, and no
one's ever thought to have a wedding the round. And
that is from he gave us some facts, but we
have time for that. That is from Dan and of

(24:22):
t d f Illustration dot Com because he's a cool artist.
I wanted to plug that from Dan and finally Josh
from Jake in Newport Richie, Florida says, I was an
accident of the eighties and I missed them up at
hey Day, but I was lucky enough to have three
older sisters and parents who had the foresight to ensure
that they taped several seasons of the Muppet Show. So

(24:45):
Jake is a big fan of the Muppets now and
he told us this fact, which I did not know
since Jim Henson's death, Ralph the Dog has not spoken
and is seldom used. And it's my understanding that they
do this out of reverence to Mr Henson because Ralph
was his favorite Muppet. Oh yeah, yeah, check this wiped
away here, you sweet old softie. So that's muppet mail.

(25:06):
We got hundreds of pieces of mail and good blog
response and you thanks for sending them. And it was
a good show. Yeah, and we'll try to keep you
supplied with more good shows in the future. If you
want to send an email and try to make Chuck cry,
it's not that hard. You can send it to Stuff
podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on

(25:31):
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