Surely many dog owners have ever wondered whether their pets are able to remember the past, for example, pleasant moments in life spent with their owner. Scientists have long been studying the mental abilities of dogs and their memory to answer this and many other questions. However, this is quite a difficult task, since animals cannot say what they are thinking about. In addition, people often misinterpret the behavior of their pets. Nevertheless, researchers have managed to make some conclusions.
Dogs have memory and self-awareness, but can they reproduce events? Photo source: photopole.ru
Episodic memory and self-awareness
The fact that dogs remember the past is beyond doubt, otherwise they would not be trainable and would not remember commands, and would not gain life experience. However, it should be understood that there are different types of memory. For example, semantic memory is responsible for remembering “dry facts”, such as commands. It is believed that almost all animals have semantic memory.
But episodic memory is responsible for the ability to not just remember facts, but also to recall entire events from life. For a long time, scientists believed that dogs, like all other animals, do not have episodic memory, since they lack the type of self-awareness necessary for this that humans have. However, this point of view has recently begun to change, as many studies have shown that animals have much higher mental abilities than previously thought.
Even some fish, such as wrasse, are self-aware: www.clasbio.ru
For example, some studies have shown that even fish are self-aware, at least some of them. Moreover, many scientists agree with the New York Declaration, which states that all vertebrates and even some insects have consciousness.
Dogs can remember events from their lives
As scientists explain, our memories are literally scattered throughout the brain. In order to reproduce a memory we need, the hippocampus extracts it from one or another part of the brain, like a librarian takes the right book from a shelf. Without the hippocampus, we would not be able to reproduce our memories.
But can mammals recall memories the same way humans do? Probably not, since they too have a hippocampus. So if there is a “librarian,” there must be “books” (memories) that he gets out. So it is not surprising that a majority of pet owners in one survey reported that their dogs or cats remember past events, even isolated ones, that happened many years ago.
Dogs can repeat actions after humans. Photo source: journal.tinkoff.ru
Scientists have also tested this experimentally. For example, one study conducted by Hungarian scientists showed that dogs can watch their owner's actions and then try to imitate them when given the appropriate command. At first glance, this may seem like a typical example of learning, but the dogs were able to imitate their owner's actions at any time, even when they were given the command while performing another task.
As the researchers explain, in order to repeat the owner's actions, the dog needs to remember how it observed the movements, what it saw at that moment, and understand how to repeat the movements it saw with its own body. This is a fairly complex task, which indicates that dogs have episodic memory.
Dogs can reproduce events from the past with almost certainty. Photo source: championat.com
In addition, the scientists conducted other studies, such as asking them to repeat their own actions, which required not only episodic memory but also self-awareness. These studies confirmed the findings that dog personality traits are much more complex than previously thought.
Animal brains work the same way as human brains
Dogs' brains aren't well understood, but scientists have studied rats' brains extensively, finding evidence that these rodents can actually replay recent events in their heads, such as navigating a maze. Overall, the animals' brains are very similar to humans, with general evidence suggesting that their memory has much more in common with humans than previously thought.
Hachiko the dog came to Shibuya Station in Tokyo every day for 9 years, hoping to meet his deceased owner there. Photo source: bbc.com
The brain of dogs is most likely no exception. They may not remember events as well as people, for example, they recall them in shorter fragments, but they can still think about the past. A great example of this is the story of Hachiko the dog, who lived in Japan.
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Hachiko met his owner Hidesaburo Ueno from work every day at Shibuya Station in Tokyo. In 1925, Hidesaburo Ueno suddenly died of a stroke. The dog was taken in by a gardener who lived next door. At the same time, Hachiko continued to come to Shibuya Station every day at the same time and peer at passersby, hoping to see his owner among them. This continued for the next 9 years, until the dog died himself.