Do animals feel time?

[JohnB]

Or the passing of it?

 

Might be a silly question, but my cat got me thinking. (And I know I may be anthropomorphizing here)

 

I work roughly regular hours with occasional really weird ones. Of an afternoon, the cat is happily asleep on the front veranda.

 

If I come home unusually early, he'll lift his head and look at me as if to say "What the hell are you doing home early?"

 

If I come home at the usual time, he gets up, stretches and waits for me at the top of the stairs.

 

If I'm late, he'll be waiting half way down the stairs and give me a dirty look.

 

If I'm very late, he waits in the middle of the driveway.

 

This behaviour leads me to think that he can distinguish between early, normal, late and very late. This would imply that he must feel the difference between a "short time" and a "long time".

 

So, can animals feel the passing of time?

[iNow]

Yes, animals of all sorts can be taught how to respond to timing tasks. They would be unable to do this if they did not experience the passage of time.

 

Here's a fun example taken from a show on our own perceptions of time, and how things like adrenaline and drugs can influence our temporal experience. Roughly 5.5 minutes in for the part on rats:

 

[JohnB]

Interesting, thanks.

[iNow]

Btw... my dog does that, too. If I come home early, he's like "dude, WTF? It's not time for you to be here yet."

 

He also has the strange ability to always know when dinner time is.

[Allister]

I think that they may respond to the lighting changes with genetically programmed behaviors. That cats would specifically be able to differentiate the concepts of "night" and "day"; to understand what those abstractions actually mean and apply them, doesn't seem possible to me. Their most developed specialized part of their brain structure is the amygdala. The distinction here is that they wouldn't actually "feel time", because time does not exist to them, but "feel natural lighting", which subtly change behaviors.

[iNow]

Can you support any of that with research? You seem to have made it up, but I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you to share studies which:

 

1) Show that cats can differentiate between concepts such as night and day

2) Show that the "most developed specialized part of their brain structure is the amygdala"

3) Show how their feelings of changes in "natural lighting, which subtly change behaviors" is any different than what happens in humans.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

My cats seem to know what time every evening they're supposed to get their tuna. I'll have to experiment to see what circumstances can change and have them still stand and wait for tuna -- are they simply conditioned to expect it after I have dinner, or do they know it is roughly 8 and it's tuna time?

[mathsgeek]

animals feel time, face it, man!!!!!!! lol

[pioneer]

I tend to think that animals react to time in a way that is similar to a human waking up in the morning, just before the alarm clock goes off. You are not abstracting time nor feeling the concept of time consciously in your sleep. The brain, unconsciously, wakes you and then you become aware. At dinner time, the animal wakes up to dinner, and begins to get ready to eat.

 

Do this the other way. Say we were watching a person sleep near an alarm clock. They suddenly awaken 5 minutes before it went off. Do we say they were already up and thinking about this? They weren't even conscious until an unconscious trigger woke the mind. That trigger woke the mind a little before they got up, and got them thinking it is time to open your eyes and check the time.

 

Those who need an alarm clock to wake them up, need an external trigger to wake the mind. With animals, if they are going about their day, the change of lighting, might become the alarm clock that wakes them up to their eating procedure. After the alarm clock wakes the human, they have their morning ritual for getting ready, which you can do even when you are half asleep. The animal will behave in a predictable way (ritual behavior) triggered by the external alarm, even if his mind is half asleep (relative to humans). Animals may "feel" the alarm trigger but they are not abstracting after that, just ritual reacting to it.

Edited November 24, 2008 by pioneer

[CharonY]

Simply put. Yes they do. More or less precisely as we do. The molecular basis of the diurnal clocks is to my knowledge very similar across almost all animals.

[jim350300]

They may judge time by hungry or not

[npts2020]

They may judge time by hungry or not

 

Well, time for migration, mating, hibernation and I am sure some other things are not likely to be related to being hungry for more than a few species.

[Petanquell]

I don't have a cat but I've got fish and they are probably the best animals to show how animals feel time. It wasn't my idea but I tried it anyway.

I fed them every day at the same time (only once a day, at 5 o'clock ) in the same corner of the aquarium and after a pretty short time, they were waiting in that corner only a few minutes before five o'clock. I don't have big aquarium but i'm sure, they were waiting.

[snezanaulbrich]

Of corse animals can feel time, they know when to wake up and when to go to sleep, they also have seasonal changes to their bodies such as hibernation during winter and females going on heat every so often during the year.