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Originally Posted by L-Pink
Check out the 60 Minutes link I posted.
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I'll give it a whirl.
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In trying to understand dogs' concept of time, humans cannot help but reference their own concept of time. But that's tricky since humans have the unique ability to construct artificial measures of time such as the second, minute, and hour. This is mainly because humans use episodic memory in order to travel through time, recalling past events and looking forward to future ones. It's what many scientists believe makes humans unique.
But just because dogs don't perceive time in this way doesn't mean they are completely stuck in the moment, as a lot of the research on this subject would suggest. Dogs are capable of being trained based on past events and taught to anticipate future events based on past experiences. This argues in favor of a kind of canine version of episodic memory, according to research conducted by Dr. Thomas Zentall of the University of Kentucky.
The essential difference appears to be that humans can pinpoint when something happened in the past by relating it to other events. For example, we remember our wedding day as well as who attended, what songs were played, and the happiness we felt. Dogs, on the other hand, can only distinguish how much time has passed since an event has occurred (e.g., "My food bowl has been empty for six hours.").
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Zentall has done research showing that dogs can distinguish how much time has passed since an event has occurred.
dogs have memory.