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Comment by krackers | Hacker News Reader

Do animals have a sense of time in the same sense we do?

Smaller animals seem to have much faster muscle twitch and reaction time. It's very likely that they perceive the finer motor control much faster than humans. But if a fly can dodge raindrops, what must it be thinking when it's sitting on a windowsill for like an hour? Is that like 3 days for it?

I don't recommend it, but people have experienced serious time dilation while doing shrooms: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16714323/

Has anyone experienced this? Also this: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.0000...

The world stood still every time I did mushrooms. Check the clock at 9:30, trip all night long, check the clock again and it's only 10:15.

If you're having a good trip it's a divine gift, you get to trip for like 20 hours in under 3 or 4 hours. But if you're having a bad trip it's the 17th layer of hell and you have to keep going back to the beginning every time you think about time.

von bertalanffy talks about it in his general systems theory

some small animals have a refresh rate that is different from us, and if you stimulate their vision faster than that, they don't perceive it

What do you mean "in the same sense we do?"

Pets are good at learning your schedule. They know when you normally come home, or when you feed them, and they start to get impatient if you're late in either.

Sure, that example relies on another factor as a frame of reference (hunger, or the sun setting). But don't humans do that as well? Our sense of time shifts dramatically when we're kept indoors without the ability to see natural light.

They do not know about daylight saving time, however.

My cat has a particularly keen sense for when dinner time is. He starts reminding me at 5PM, often on the dot. One could probably set a clock to it.

We actually just had a cat change her food seeking behavior by exactly 1 hour during daylight savings, which allowed us to mostly exclude her internal clock and time sense.

I'm not sure there is even a way to study the fact that other people have the same sense of time that we do - I think this would fall under qualia. We just assume it's roughly the same like I should see the blue you see.

Regardless it's clear from training our dogs that they feel impatience, which I think would be best described as a rising sense of discomfort over time. A younger dog and/or one with less training will get up more quickly by itself seeking a reward, while after more training they can put those thoughts aside and wait through it. After a tough day of training or sports, just like us they have less willpower remaining and are more likely to revert.

And right now it's 3:30 pm and he's letting me know the school kids have left the neighbourhood so it's time for his walk. I'd chalk this reaction up to other factors like the noise outside but it happens during the holidays too.

From what I've read, dogs can smell time through the decay of scent particles. They don't know that an hour has passed, but they know that something doesn't smell as strongly. They understand day/night, but don't understand the concept of time the way we do.

Regardless, the dogs I've known have known the exact time for breakfast and dinner better than any humans I've known, and without any clocks to look at

My dog is an odd ball weirdo... he will have a whole bowl of food and not eat it until you spoon feed it to him or drop a few pieces on the ground first. Or he will eat it all in the middle of the night when I'm asleep. I end up just leaving a full bowl for him all the time cause I never know when he's hungry. I've tried to schedule him for food and he just won't go along with it at all.

Anecdotal and very "noisey".

My cat badgers me when I'm up too late (midnight) even though it's been hours since the sun set. She badgers me if I sleep in too long on the weekends, etc.

She seems to have an idea of the day-to-day schedule and get's upset if it's not followed.

So at least cats seem to display evidence of knowing a "schedule" based on more cues then just daylight/hunger

Ha, yeah our male cat will come and shout at us if he thinks we're up too late!

I've anecdotally seen plenty of evidence for object / other being permanence. However I don't know offhand of a good study design for gauging the perception of time rather than other factors like hunger, restroom need, sleep, etc.

I intimately believe that what we call time is partly distance / effort biologically.

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