Cats and dogs can remember events that happened years ago
They respond to memory prompts just like humans
Cats and dogs can remember events that happened years ago and respond to memory prompts just like humans, a study has concluded.
Researchers from Denmark surveyed cat and dog owners about the occasions on which their pets had shown signs of remembering a specific past event.
The team found that the majority of cats and dogs seem to have a so-called episodic memory — one often triggered by cues like locations, just like our memories are.
In their studies, Psychologists Amy Lewis and Dorthe Berntsen of Aarhus University in Denmark surveyed a total of 375 cat and dog owners who had cared for their pet for more than six months.
They asked whether each owner felt that their pet had ever remembered a past event or events — what experts call 'episodic' memory.
If they did, the owners were asked to report on their pet's memory of this event — considering whether their were any similarities in the location of the remembered event and the animal's surroundings at the time of recollection.
Participants were asked to exclude those experiences that the pet had come to expect as occurring at a given time or place (like being fed at dinner time), as this could be explained by a different type of recollection, called 'semantic memory'.
Instead of covering specific events, semantic memory covers general knowledge about the world — in humans, for example, this might include knowing that the sky is blue or knowing how to use a telephone.
The researchers found that the majority of participants reported that their pets remembered past events — with similar proportions of cats and dogs showing signs of having an episodic memory.
In fact, only 20 per cent of owners did not feel that their pet had exhibited signs of recalling specific past events.
The team report that more of the remembered events took place months before the recollection than over lesser spans of time — and nearly half of the events were recalled 'a few times' by the pets, the owners said.
Furthermore, the recollections seemed to be largely — in around 80 per cent of cases — triggered by the animal's surroundings, with location being the most frequent cue, while 'interaction with an animal or person' also common.
While cat and dog memories appeared similar in most respects, the team did note that dogs' memories tended to be rated more positively than cats' ones.
The researchers caution, however, that this could be a result of the owner's opinions, or alternatively the more nuanced ways in which cats display emotion.
Felines were also found to respond more often to sound-based triggers.
'The findings suggest that both cats and dogs have event memories,' the researchers wrote.
'More than half of event memories described events that occurred once, suggesting the recall of temporally specific events.'
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.