Stuff You Should Know - How do dogs perceive time?

Episode Date: September 17, 2009

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Chuck Bryant. Chuck Bryant. Yes, nice Chuck. We'll get to that in a second. Do it 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, let me do a little intro here, a little lead in segway, whatever.

I know, I spoiled your parade there. What do we call them these days? What do we what? Segways, lead ins, intros. Intro. Schmeckles. Schmeckles. So Chuck, about a year ago, well a year ago this month, Paris, well France, Paris, France

made history, legal history. How so? They actually used a dog as a witness in a criminal case. Did they get the dog to like bark at someone? Yep. Wow. I kid you not. Well like an intruder?

At the very least, and I hope I'm not a Benglideshi newspaper here because I found it 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 have egg on your face soon? We'll find out. But there's a dog named Scooby that was brought into a, I should have forwarded you this article. There is 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 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. It could be to how dogs may or may not perceive time the best I could come up with. That's great. Thanks. So 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 have a memory, then they should be able to perceive time. Right.

Right. Chuck, let's talk about this. What is time? Oh, dude, you kidding me? Well, you know my whole deal of time. I've said it before. What? Well, 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 construct of time. Yes. Based on 24 hours. Right. Which is all kind of arbitrary. Seven days in a week.

30. Well, not necessarily. Well, not anymore. It's not. Here's why. Uh, it was actually kind of ingenious that we should come up with a 24 hour day because we have these things called circadian oscillators. Yes.

Which are the, well, they're the fluctuators in our circadian rhythm, which is what makes us fall asleep at night, wake up in the morning, body temperature, 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 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.

Right. But these circadian clocks actually exist on about a 24 hour period. No, that makes sense then. So but like you said, days on the calendar and all that, that's, that is a human construct. Yeah. 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, right?

But of time in and of itself, which is essentially a past, present and 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 have any dogs? I have two dogs. What? Shut up.

I have two dogs and I'm actually fostering two feral puppy rescues, which 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. Yeah. 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. Um, send us an email if you want one of Chuck's puppies. Very cute. Yeah. So anyway, if your dogs are 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 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, and I'm waiting 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 we reached the bone of contention, right, the, sorry for that

pun. I'm not Jonathan Strickland. Your dogs do the same thing though, I assume, right? Well, no, my dogs are fed constantly. They always have food. They, for some reason I'd lucked out and they just eat whenever they want whenever they're hungry. I can't imagine that.

It's pretty cool. My dogs eat their food like it's the first time they've ever been fed twice a day. I've seen that before. My dogs, they're pretty laid back when it comes to stuff like that. Are they fat? No. Really? No, they're, they're healthier than I am.

Well, they don't smile. They're healthier than a lot of people I know. No, they're very, they regulate their food intake on their own. It's weird. It's so weird. Um, but the, but I know what you're talking about. So the question is this, do your dogs know based on past experience that food is coming at a certain time of day, not necessarily like 535 PM, but say as far as the dog's concerned,

when sun is low in sky over there, right? Are they Native Americans? Yeah. I was going to say. No, they're, they're like Italians playing Native Americans. Right. What do you think? I'm dumb.

Well, 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.

Do you want me to go into this because this is outside research? Uh, I have no choice then. Semantic memory is all right, Chuck. Let's say that you have brain damage to your frontal lobe. I do. In fact, 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 could conceivably learn how to play chess, right? Right. But you won't remember where you learned how to play chess. Right. Much like, uh, they say a baby learns 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 talking on a day to 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 cause I'm crawling. Right. Right. But they don't remember, you know, teaching them like, come crawl to me. That kind of thing. Right.

So yeah, that's semantic memory. Episodic memory, uh, would be like, um, what did you have for breakfast this morning? I had a fruit smoothie. You had a fruit smoothie. I remember what the light looked like. I remember what, uh, what smelled like that is precisely episodic memory. And uh, I should probably give a shout out to TR's and tall, who I'm like, just blatantly ripping off right now.

Um, the, the, uh, chess example was, uh, one of Zen tall's, uh, 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 a smoothie this morning, I must have, because I always have a smoothie, right? That would be, well, not the burping part, but if you always had it, then that'd be more like semantic memory.

So we reached the question, do dogs perceive time or are these reactions that appear like they're, they're keeping track of time some way, 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. Oh, I have to say I'm going to take issue with Dr. Roberts. Yeah. William Roberts. He's an animal cognition researcher right off the bat.

You're taking issue with that. Not that part. Okay. No. Yeah. He did some studies on pigeons and primates, uh, to name a couple and longterm and short term memory as far as, uh, 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 kind of thing. Right. Which is what, uh, that's working memory, right? Yes. And longterm is reference memory. Yeah. But as far as reference goes, they couldn't remember it that well if there was, if there was a big break in between.

Right. Um, Roberts actually wrote a very famous paper as far as animal cognition goes, uh, where he basically said that he concluded 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 time, he means that they, uh, they live exclusively in the present, that they don't have the capacity for forming, uh, longterm episodic memory. Episodic is the key word. It is very much the key word.

Because I know 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 you're talking about with the baby and learning how to walk. Right. Um, but that's, that's not, there's a lot of, uh, examples out there in nature that would kind of, um, belie, uh, Dr. Roberts's, uh, idea that animals or dogs are stuck in time. Well, a good one is, uh, squirrels foraging, uh, food, stocking up for the winter 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 are inexplicably disappeared, which I assume some researchers 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. It 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 one about, uh, the bananas right? Chuck, there's, uh, there were some primates that were given choices between more or less bananas. Yeah.

And predictably at first, if you offered an eight, uh, one banana or two bananas, they're going to take the two bananas, but they found that when they started increasing the number of bananas, like 10 compared to 20, they would just go for the 10 bananas. They wouldn't. And he thought this meant they can't, uh, they have no, uh, 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 Robert's fails to take into account social structure.

Sure. Right. Uh, we, we know that we could use 10 bananas for tomorrow, but we also have things like, um, preservation techniques or refrigeration available to us. That's what I thought too. If you go back, uh, 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.

Uh, I would have mentioned that that would actually explain a lot of the primate decisions. There's no real reason to their society isn't set up on this idea that I need more and more to protect myself in the future. Exactly. And 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 may like one, I was, when I read that, the first thing I thought was maybe

they're not, they've never taken more than 10 bananas in their life because they've never needed to. So it doesn't even don on them that that should be something they would do. Exactly. Well, I guess what we're saying, both of us are on the same page here. There are other explanations. I agree. And I think one of the things I took from this article was that, uh, it, Robert's found

it conclusive that animals are stuck in time by cherry picking some, uh, some studies here. Yeah. We kind of disagree with them. Yeah. There's a lot of other factors. I know that my dog Lucy is stuck in time at 5 30 PM every day because she's always asking for the food. So I guess another problem, it's entirely possible Chuck that we're, our brains just

aren't big enough to, uh, they're not as big as Robert's brain. Maybe. Did you ever hear that like goldfish have a eight second memory span? I've never heard that. So I have, right? You have a goldfish and you have a goldfish here. Very cutie. Yeah.

Molly. She's very cute. It's named Molly. I didn't know that. Yeah. Interesting. Um, but having an episodic memory makes it almost impossible to think about, um, not 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 and in your computer. Um, or as new experiences come into the present, our older ones pushed out after they hit this eight second maturity level. Right. And how, how do they test that on a goldfish anyway? Perfect Chuck, perfect segue.

Here's the biggest problem. Robert's position is almost inherently speciesist. You familiar with this term? Yeah. This is a legitimate term. I've seen this up. Animals have no souls. Animals don't have souls.

It's impossible for an, like a dog to be happy because that's a secondary emotion and dogs aren't self-aware enough. There's a competing explanation for all this, um, speciesists 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. But there's another way of looking at it, and that is that humans simply haven't come up with tests that are clever enough to get definitive proof that an animal, uh, can experience

happiness or can or is aware of time, the future, the past, that kind of thing. You can take that way too far, like after, you know, tests, after tests, after tests that proves the opposite. You could still conceivably say, well, there's a test out there that, that we haven't come up with proves that they can. Um, but I think that the testing that has been done is very much below that threshold so far. Yeah.

I don't think we have a clue, um, what, what animals are capable of as far as consciousness goes because we have such a loose grasp on our own consciousness. Sure. And 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 T, 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, the dog whisperer might say, you know, that's, you're putting your human, uh, construct on the dogs from the mind. Yeah. Anthropomorphizing.

Yeah. I don't know, man. My dog is, they're both pretty emotional. Well, yeah. Anthropomorphizing is the, uh, go to ammunition for speciesists. Yeah. Uh, I don't mean to say that anybody who's saying like, no animals can't be happy because it's secondary emotion and they lack that sense of self-awareness that's required to

experience a secondary emotion is a speciesist. But the two 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, um, think animals can be happy and all of the implications that, that come with that. Jerry, I bet you think your dog has a soul, right? Jerry's saying, yeah. Jerry just gave the sweetest face and nodded, yes. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, I feel like Chuck and I just opened a big old can of worms. So we'll see how this plays out in the emails, right? Yeah. If you want to read more about dogs perceiving time, uh, to answer the question, uh, according to Roberts, no dogs don't perceive time times a human construct consisting of a past, present, and future and dogs pretty much live in the present. Chuck and I don't necessarily agree with that one.

Uh, you can go on and type in dogs perceive time in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. Since I just said that, it means it's time for a whole mess of listener mail. You're right. Josh, this is, uh, we're just going to call this Muppet Mail and we, uh, are going to 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 sea change episode. And plus we just want to see how, how long this, uh, background music actually goes for.

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, uh, we should say our colleague and friend, Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff

Fame, uh, his, uh, sister, sister knows his friends with Heather Henson. And it, it went viral. Thanks to him. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. 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 cause I didn't want to just do one, um, quickly before we start, and we never do this, but, um, a guy sent me an email and I kind of, uh, touched a cord with me. So I want to quickly give a shout out for, uh, for Joe to Beth and Elwood, Indiana and Joe 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 on your bang? But Beth and Elwood, uh, Joe, Joe thinks you're a cool chick and, uh, so do we, cause she actually sent us a alien hand syndrome video, which rocked.

Cool. That's good. I'll show it to you. Uh, quick, uh, 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 goofed that one. You're thinking of home shopping that was for kids.

Uh, we did not mention every Muppet movie. We did not mention every Muppet venture because no, I want to, I want to elucidate on this. We did that on purpose. First of all, we mentioned the three that were in theatrical 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, but we, we would have been sitting here reading things all day long about the dark crystal and, uh, other Muppet ventures. So we chose to only do the Henson ones, which I have to say dark crystal, that creeps me out still. And that was Henson too. Cause I know people are going to write and say that was Henson, but get over it.

Right. Uh, we had a guy named Peter wrote in and he told us about the Muppet, what not workshop. Yeah. And, um, Goldman Sachs at, uh, F.A.O. Schwartz, yes, and you can go to New York city and you could do it online, but I looked and it's down right now, but, um, I think it's just around Christmas time or the holidays. No, they got bought out by a toys or S 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 Sachs and it costs about a hundred bucks. And he sent me a picture of he and his, uh, a little cute daughter with her Muppet, what not. So you want to thank Peter for that and actually I'm going on and on, but Peter had one of the big, uh, Fu Manchu mustaches like me. Yeah. Did I tell you about this? No.

I said, uh, very cool. Peter, thanks for sending this. I said, looks like you picked up a mustache while you were there and he wrote back and said, no, I got that at the Sam Elliott, uh, Sam Elliott supply center down the street or something like that. Nice. Peter packed a picnic supper. Um, so that is all for the corrections.

Now we have a few emails, Josh and Chuck had just listened to how Muppets worked. I was excited to hear you talk about it because you mentioned the costume designer from Miss Biggie who happens to be my aunt Kalista. Oh, wow. Uh, she, uh, if you look up the Muppet movie, you can see her in the costume and wardrobe department on IMDB. She worked closely with Henson and I've actually seen a picture of her with Jim Henson setting up some Muppets in Emmett Otter's Jugbane 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 the next one. Uh, hi guys. I love your recent podcast. I was listening and thought I would mention that Jim Henson studied Muppetology at University of Maryland. I know this because I went to school there and there is a Jim Henson 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 is actually a little, uh, a bench, uh, statue. It's a bench with Henson sitting on it and Kermit sitting on the back of the bench and they're kind of holding hands. It is beyond cute. It is very cute. So, and, and she also says that, um, this is from, uh, Leisha, that they have the rights

to it ain't easy being green and rainbow connection. So they're marching band actually plays that the University of Maryland Terps. Yeah. Go Terps. Uh, moving on, man, listen to this background music. Chuck is. I know, I know, I know. Uh, we compared them up and showed a 30 rock and a fill 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, a few scattered seemingly sensible adults who really have no jobs and nothing else to do. No, Mr. Hooper had a story. Oh, that's true. Uh, finally it hit me while working my job as a special ed classroom assistant. It is one big government operated group home facility for special needs children and adults.

Uh, think about it, Bert, uh, displays classic Asperger syndrome, they share a bedroom, uh, and obviously have some adult taking care of the rest of their house. Oscar Schizophrenic with his mood swings and a worm as a best friend as his big bird with his imaginary friend, uh, was it snuffle up because, and tell me Grover's not dealing with severe ADHD and cookie monster from manic bipolar tendencies and the jobless adults, Gordon, Susan and Bob. So that's from Phil. Are they jobless adults or the caregivers?

He says they're jobless adults. All right. We'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 Henson soundstage next year. Sweet. So cool.

Uh, he and his wife to be toward the soundstage. It was like being behind the scenes at the Muppet show. We're honored as the first wedding ever to be hosted there. And I asked him, I wrote it back to like, dude, what's the hookup? And 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

and that is from, uh, he gave us some facts, but we don't have time for that. That is from Dan and, uh, of TDFillustration.com because he's a cool artist. I wanted to plug that from Dan and finally Josh from Jake in Newport, Richie, Florida says, uh, I was in accident of the eighties and I missed the Muppet heyday, but I was lucky enough to have three older sisters and parents who had the foresight to ensure that they tape several seasons of the Muppet show. Uh, so 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 wipe the way it's here. Teary eye. You sweet old softy.

So that's Muppet mail. We got hundreds of pieces of mail and good blog response and thanks for sending them and it was a good show. Yeah. So we'll try to keep you, uh, 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, uh, you can send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

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