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Dogs Lost in Time
Does your dog know what time it is? The answer is yes. And no. Scientists are learning more about how animals remember time. It looks like they don't keep track of it the way we do. Human beings use what's called episodic memory, and that might make us unique in the animal kingdom.
Episodic memory means that you can remember what you ate for breakfast today, and when you ate it. You also remember you ate it after you woke up, and before you went to school.
Animals don't remember things that way. They remember they ate breakfast, but they don't remember how long ago that was, or what happened before and after. It's hard to figure out what animals know, because you can't just ask a dog what it remembers. Well, you can, but good luck getting an answer!
To sort it out, researchers put rats in a special kind of maze. They put food in certain places every four hours. The rats went back to the food spots every four hours, but when scientists put food in places at the same time each day, the rats never saw the daily pattern. The scientists said that rats knew time was passing, but could not think in terms of days, weeks, or months. So don't feel hurt the next time your cat forgets your birthday!
I'm Adelbert and that's what happened in science this week!
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