Animal's ability to plan future events

In summary: They all seem to know when it's breakfast time! Can dogs/cats (or wild animals [elephants]) anticipate future events and plan accordingly?There is a pretty interesting story about one chimp who pre-planned attacking the zoo-visitors. He had learned that the clicking on the linoleum betrayed his intent, so he would wait until the humans were gone before sneaking past the house to get off of the property.
  • #1
rootX
479
4
Can dogs/cats (or wild animals [elephants]) anticipate future events and plan accordingly?

I am sure that they can remember events and know how to respond to a particular event (like
see stranger => bark
hear a name => if its calling name => respond to it
winter is coming => migrate etc)
but do they think of future events (or past) or they always respond to the present.
There's a pretty interesting story about one chimp who pre-planned attacking the zoo-visitors.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7928996.stm
 
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  • #2
Yeah its weird to think what goes on inside their heads that makes them thing "i got to go do this now".
 
  • #3
Anyone who has spent any time around animals at all can tell you that they plan for future events. How far into the future is the question.
 
  • #4
My cat seems to have a natural drive for eating, cleaning, and going to the bathroom. For the rest of the things that she does, it seems like she just reacts to things that catch her interest. She'll be laying, and staring into space, and then something moves and that's where her attention goes. Or she'll get up and walk, and whether she has a purpose isn't important, because if she did, it was completely forgotten when she heard the birds chirping outside and rushed towards the window, or when she heard the keys jiggling in the door and she rushes to it.

With the food, she has learned that if she meow's near her bowl, it will get filled by me or my girlfriend. If we don't here her, she will come find us and cry to our faces. Then, as soon as we make the slightest movement in response, she seems to conclude that we are going to feed her, so she runs to her bowl without seeing if we are following her. This might seem like it's something she thought on, and then did it. But I could just as easily conclude that the reason she comes to find us is because she was stricken with the feeling of hunger, and out of habit she knew to come find the food-bearers.

I'm not sure where I was going with this, but there it is.
 
  • #6
When our dog Phoebe would get something she wasn't supposed to have, my wife would say drop it and then give our dog a treat. Now our dog looks for one of these "forbidden" objects (like a sock or a stick), walks into the room, drops the object at her feet to make sure we see it, then waits for a reaction from one of us, nabs the object, gets the thrill of a short chase followed by "drop it" and receiving a treat. I'd call that planning.
 
  • #7
Someone once posted here saying that his dog had learned to retract its claws when going after catfood in the kitchen. The dog realized that the clicking on the linoleum betrayed his intent.

Our dogs once learned to wait until Tsu and I went to bed before sneaking past the house to get off of the property. They never let us see them doing this so we had no idea that they were getting out. Once we got wise to their program, we caught them trying to sneak away almost every night for time.

Goats are clever. We discovered after getting rid of our goats that they had been eating the dogfood for years. We only realized this because the food bill was suddenly cut in half when the goats left! For something like five or six years, they had never let us see them doing this. they are also notorious escape artists. We used an electric fence to keep them in. Over time they learned to put their noses very close to a wire without touching it, for testing purposes. If the fence was in good shape, they could sense the electric field. If weeds or branches were short circuiting the fence somewhere, they could tell, and they would make a break for it.

You haven't lived until you've chased 4 goats at 3 AM.
 
  • #8
Has no one heard of a dog burying its bone?!?
 
  • #9
rootX said:
Can dogs/cats (or wild animals [elephants]) anticipate future events and plan accordingly?

I am sure that they can remember events and know how to respond to a particular event (like
see stranger => bark
hear a name => if its calling name => respond to it
winter is coming => migrate etc)
but do they think of future events (or past) or they always respond to the present.



There's a pretty interesting story about one chimp who pre-planned attacking the zoo-visitors.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7928996.stm

Yeah... you haven't been around many animals have you??!

Let's just say that at 4 every morning I don't have to go very far to find all 125 horses on their way into feed and get corralled and ready for guests.

I can drive up everyday at 9 pm and the dog will be there waiting, not for food... just for fun.

There are plenty of examples. Even the skunks know when you're going to be around and when your not. Not that they really care... no one effs with skunks.
 
  • #10
Our cat jumps off something on the porch making a loud thud when it feels/hears the footsteps so that someone will let it inside.

Watching this cat hunt is actually pretty fun. They crawl up on their stomachs and then pounce. Gotta be some planning involved in that.
 
  • #11
baywax said:
Yeah... you haven't been around many animals have you??!

Few dogs (German shepherd) when young. I don't remember much now but they were pretty interesting :)

Obviously, animals are capable of learning things. But, there are limitations to how complex activities they can perform relative to a 5 years old kid. I am convinced that the world of a small kid is much larger than that of pet and kids think much more than an animal. But maybe because animals don't have many goals or things to think about - just food, sex, and shelter and some emotions. I wonder they ever think about events that never occurred before. Had ever cat thought about enslaving his owner? (this might be somewhat true).
 
  • #12
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  • #13
Looking on youtube, there are actually a lot of cool videos displaying animal intelligence.
 
  • #14
mbisCool said:
Looking on youtube, there are actually a lot of cool videos displaying animal intelligence.

I don't know how far into the future an animal would be able to calculate. But that's usually a foolish thing to do in the first place and animals are pretty savvy. There seems to be more of a focus on what's necessary rather than what might be necessary later for animials.

Many species do store food for future use... out of instinct rather than out of intelligence. I doubt that geese and other birds flying south have a picture of Miami Beach in their little heads as a motivation to get there. They are flying on the auto pilot of instinct, much like salmon.
 
  • #15
baywax said:
Many species do store food for future use... out of instinct rather than out of intelligence.

They must not think too far ahead. When we catch our cats adding things like catnip to the grocery list, they don't even try to fake the handwriting.
 
  • #16
Ivan Seeking said:
When we catch our cats adding things like catnip to the grocery list, they don't even try to fake the handwriting.

BWHAHAHAHA! :rofl:
 
  • #17
The main point in the story about the chimp is -as far as I remember from the article in Science- that not only is he planning for the future (which apes are known to do to to some extent); he is anticipating a future emotional state.
I.e. he understands that he will occasionally get angry when there are humans looking at him, so he spends some of his time when there are NO visitors around gathering stones that he can then throw when he gets angry (he doesn't throw stones all the time, only when he gets upset for some reason).
 
  • #18
Ivan Seeking said:
They must not think too far ahead. When we catch our cats adding things like catnip to the grocery list, they don't even try to fake the handwriting.

:rofl: but you have to wonder about bees. They have enough neurons to go out, gather information about the weather, sun angle, location of food source then return to the hive and communicate the whole report through interpretive dance. Must be instinct.
 
  • #19
f95toli said:
The main point in the story about the chimp is -as far as I remember from the article in Science- that not only is he planning for the future (which apes are known to do to to some extent); he is anticipating a future emotional state.
I.e. he understands that he will occasionally get angry when there are humans looking at him, so he spends some of his time when there are NO visitors around gathering stones that he can then throw when he gets angry (he doesn't throw stones all the time, only when he gets upset for some reason).

And that's where we get our brains.
 
  • #20
Something else that comes to mind: When you think about it, catching a ball or frisbee is a fairly complex process, and some dogs may be better at this than some humans!
 
  • #21
When it comes to playing ball, horses are even more impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVm-HwAkVp8
 
  • #22
As Mr. Ed shows in supposedly following the parabolic trajectory of the baseball, animals have an intuitive sense of physics. My guess is that for free fall they follow a more linear trajectory (continuously approximating the parabola?)
 
  • #23
Ivan Seeking said:
Something else that comes to mind: When you think about it, catching a ball or frisbee is a fairly complex process, and some dogs may be better at this than some humans!

I've seen dragonflys catch a termite in mid-air. The dragonfly has a trapdoor mouth that just drops open and scoops up dinner.
 
  • #25
Ivan Seeking said:
Someone once posted here saying that his dog had learned to retract its claws when going after catfood in the kitchen. The dog realized that the clicking on the linoleum betrayed his intent.

Our dogs once learned to wait until Tsu and I went to bed before sneaking past the house to get off of the property. They never let us see them doing this so we had no idea that they were getting out. Once we got wise to their program, we caught them trying to sneak away almost every night for time.

Goats are clever. We discovered after getting rid of our goats that they had been eating the dogfood for years. We only realized this because the food bill was suddenly cut in half when the goats left! For something like five or six years, they had never let us see them doing this. they are also notorious escape artists. We used an electric fence to keep them in. Over time they learned to put their noses very close to a wire without touching it, for testing purposes. If the fence was in good shape, they could sense the electric field. If weeds or branches were short circuiting the fence somewhere, they could tell, and they would make a break for it.

You haven't lived until you've chased 4 goats at 3 AM.

I saw them many times but never went near being afraid of their mean looks. I always thought that their milk makes and that they are bit smarter than cows.
 
  • #26
rootX said:
I saw them many times but never went near being afraid of their mean looks. I always thought that their milk makes and that they are bit smarter than cows.

They are much smarter than cows. In fact cows are generally considered to be quite stupid.

Goats can be mean but ours thought there were dogs... and so did the dogs! They all lived together is a really big doghouse that I built for them - 4'x4'x8'. When I did this, a few of the locals laughed and told me that the dogs would eat the goats! But when the babies were born, the laughing stopped. One of the dogs [named Crash] actually adopted the babies as her own in spite of the fact that they had a mother. If Crash was giving the babies a bath, no one was allowed in the doghouse. Mom would run back and forth outside while objecting at the top of her lungs, but to no avail. Only when Crash was satisfied that the babies had been properly groomed was the pack [the other three dogs and three goats] allowed back into the house.
 
  • #27
Some interesting studies about chimps and their ability to use tools ...

Chimps craft ultimate fishing rod
Dr Sanz said: "The chimps seem to understand the function of the tool and its importance in gathering termites."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7922120.stm


'Armed' chimps go wild for honey
Scientists in the Republic of Congo found that the wild primates crafted large clubs from branches to pound the nests until they broke open.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7946614.stm
 
  • #28
Crows use tools. They will find a piece of food, or maybe just a shiney, that they can not get to then go look for something to make a tool out of, fashion their tool, and put it to use. Crows will also hide food from from other crows and animals. In and of itself not a very impressive feat but they will actually go through a long and complicated ritual of pretending to hide it in one place and then another and another. Eventually they will actually hide the food and continue on with the show until they are satisfied that any observers should be thuroughly confused.
 
  • #29
I think of most animals (apes, dolphins, and some relatives excepted) as simple finite state automata. I don't think it takes much complexity, and no planning at all, for a crow to do that:

1. Pretend to hide object
2. Go to #1 with 80% probability
3. Hide object
4. Pretend to hide object
5. Go to #4 with 80% probability

There are natural evolutionary benefits to developing these kinds of behavior, and they're simple enough that it's not hard to imagine a process developing them. Of course in this example just starting with #3 would work pretty well, the other steps being useful as competitive behaviors are developed in others.
 
  • #30
CRGreathouse said:
I think of most animals (apes, dolphins, and some relatives excepted) as simple finite state automata. I don't think it takes much complexity, and no planning at all, for a crow to do that:

1. Pretend to hide object
2. Go to #1 with 80% probability
3. Hide object
4. Pretend to hide object
5. Go to #4 with 80% probability

There are natural evolutionary benefits to developing these kinds of behavior, and they're simple enough that it's not hard to imagine a process developing them. Of course in this example just starting with #3 would work pretty well, the other steps being useful as competitive behaviors are developed in others.

I'd have to agree. However, never having been a crow I wouldn't know for sure. But, behaviours that support survival are observable throughout the animal and plant kingdom. And the best way to explain them is to attribute the behaviours to the natural selection of genes that express in terms of certain neuronal pathways that, in turn, predispose the subject to behave in certain ways. A good example being the bee, with no brain to speak of, doing interpretive dance as a form of communication.
 
  • #31
It's difficult to say exactly what future sense is involved, but mules bear grudges and will patiently bide their time (I've seen them wait for months) until their target let's down his guard and then they kick or bite the offender. And, they seem to have some sense of proportionate response as they will drop the grudge once they get payback.
 
  • #32
baywax said:
I'd have to agree. However, never having been a crow I wouldn't know for sure. But, behaviours that support survival are observable throughout the animal and plant kingdom. And the best way to explain them is to attribute the behaviours to the natural selection of genes that express in terms of certain neuronal pathways that, in turn, predispose the subject to behave in certain ways. A good example being the bee, with no brain to speak of, doing interpretive dance as a form of communication.

Remember that the bee is a social creature interacting more or less directly with 100,000 sisters, a few drones and a queen. The (an)entropy and altruism of the hive is much greater than those of the individual bee.
 
  • #33
CRGreathouse said:
I think of most animals (apes, dolphins, and some relatives excepted) as simple finite state automata. I don't think it takes much complexity, and no planning at all, for a crow to do that:

1. Pretend to hide object
2. Go to #1 with 80% probability
3. Hide object
4. Pretend to hide object
5. Go to #4 with 80% probability

There are natural evolutionary benefits to developing these kinds of behavior, and they're simple enough that it's not hard to imagine a process developing them. Of course in this example just starting with #3 would work pretty well, the other steps being useful as competitive behaviors are developed in others.

I think it shows some bit of forethought. To realize the need to hide food for future use is fairly simple and common among animals. To realize that others may find the hidden food and take it requires a bit more thought though is still relatively common. To carry out a charade of hiding something in multiple different locations so as to confuse observers though is pretty unique and requires some thought. Especially when the crow continues the charade long after hiding the food to make sure they take their competitors well off the trail. I would think this behavior would also have to be learned, I doubt it would be instinctual.

And as I mentioned crows use tools. They have been observed to fashion tools by bending bits of metal like paper clips and even putting a small hook on the end. To observe an object that you are unable to get to, go looking for something to use as a tool, fashion a tool with the material you find and even create a hook on it to better serve your endeavour I think shows some forethought.
 
  • #34
Loren Booda said:
Remember that the bee is a social creature interacting more or less directly with 100,000 sisters, a few drones and a queen. The (an)entropy and altruism of the hive is much greater than those of the individual bee.

Yes but the each individual bee is imbued with the genetic make-up that supports the overall activity of the hive.

Question too here:
humans have traits borne of the natural selection of certain genetics/behaviour and these mutations are what give us the ability to plan the future or re-visit the past.

Is this just as significant as the genetically determined behaviours of bees or chimps or birds?

What I mean to say is, the tools we have developed through natural selection are just that... tools. They do have some advantages over other genetic arrangements in other species, but they can also prove to be detrimental to our own survival. This is because, we can be mistaken about how our future plans fit into... the actual future.

Animals better adapt to the changing of their present awareness, on the day. Humans can become hormonally and psychologically devastated when the future does not present the conditions they assumed would be presented. This seems to show a lessening of the flexibility of human adaptation. We could learn a few things from our cousin species.
 
  • #35
baywax said:
Yes but the each individual bee is imbued with the genetic make-up that supports the overall activity of the hive.

Question too here:
humans have traits borne of the natural selection of certain genetics/behaviour and these mutations are what give us the ability to plan the future or re-visit the past.

Is this just as significant as the genetically determined behaviours of bees or chimps or birds?

What I mean to say is, the tools we have developed through natural selection are just that... tools. They do have some advantages over other genetic arrangements in other species, but they can also prove to be detrimental to our own survival. This is because, we can be mistaken about how our future plans fit into... the actual future.

Animals better adapt to the changing of their present awareness, on the day. Humans can become hormonally and psychologically devastated when the future does not present the conditions they assumed would be presented. This seems to show a lessening of the flexibility of human adaptation. We could learn a few things from our cousin species.

This is one of the reasons, I like eastern religious philosophies. Living present (Zen and mindfulness in Buddhism)

As for response to the future, I think it it just that animals respond differently to scarcity/future. It is one of the reasons that we have developed sophisticated processes to deal with scarcity while animals use simple. Parents pass the known processes down to their children and I don't think they try to improve or optimize much if food supply stays constant (looking at the time since beginning and their simple techniques and processes)

Other thing that struck my mind was that if American crow/bee/ant uses different processes or same than that of African/European/Asian. They must have developed techniques at once point in their evolution.
 

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