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Post by silverdragon on Aug 6, 2014 6:14:23 GMT
[Mod Edit: Moved from Water Cooler]
[edited post born of Topic drift.... but can animals tell what time it is?...]
I cant see where the keeping of Cows is unfair to cows?...
From what I see, Milking cows, they dont fret, they line up next the gate and wait, they WANT to be milked, and this isnt just training by use of any force, they know, and want, to be milked "at that time of day".
They seem perfectly happy....
Of course this begs the question, can Cows comprehend Time.
They must.....
'Cos they are quite capable of predicting when they are going to be milked.
But is this "herd" mentality?... do cows that have automated milking do it different, or do certain cows turn up at the same time every day?...
Is this a Myth?...
To me it isnt, 'cos I know it to be true.
But should it be posted to the myth section to educate Townies who dont understand country life, or that cows know what time of day they get milked and wait at the gate rather than have to be rounded up.
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Post by Lokifan on Aug 6, 2014 7:53:09 GMT
That's actually got the potential for a pretty good episode.
Can dogs/cats/goldfish/mice/cows/goats/crows tell time?
I vaguely remember reading that dogs can.
I think getting some help from a professional to set up the test could help.
Many of their best episodes involved animals.
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 6, 2014 8:29:24 GMT
I think my own Dog can tell time passing...
The Kids walk him at the same time each afternoon.
About that time, he moves to closer to the door, or goes looking for them.....
He Knows its about time he got his walk.
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Thanks for the moving of the thread Loki.
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Post by Antigone68104 on Aug 6, 2014 13:31:21 GMT
The cat my family had when my brother and I were kids was definitely aware of time, in that he knew when he could walk into the kitchen, start meowing, and stand a reasonable chance of getting some canned food. And it wasn't entirely a matter of how hungry he was, because he had dry food available all the time.
But does that count as telling time? It's really going to depend on how that phrase is defined.
As far as cows go, my city-girl-but-rural-state understanding is that cows need to be milked regularly or the overfull udder becomes painful. So are the cows walking over to the milking shed because it's time for them to be milked, or because they're starting to get uncomfortable?
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Post by the light works on Aug 6, 2014 14:58:14 GMT
some farms in the US have gone to fully automated milking systems - and found that the cows developed a habit of just wandering in whenever things started to get uncomfortable. I forget whether it increased total production, but it made the operation run smoother.
the semantics question is, does knowing when dinnertime is count as telling time?
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 7, 2014 9:12:40 GMT
Knowing when you are going to stand the best chance of getting fed is telling time, especially if that is the normal set time allocated for feeding.
If the animal is always hungry, thats not telling time.
If it can predict when the owner is going to feed it without any other signals, such as just turning up when the bowl gets rattled, then thats time awareness.
Awareness of routine is a "Depends".....
Moving to the kitchen just before someone wakes up for breakfast is prediction, moving to the kitchen for breakfast because someone has just got up is just routine "They get up I get fed".....
The cat that comes and sits on your head two mins before the alarm goes off every morning...
Thats routine and time awareness.
Routine, it happens every day.
Time awareness, its just before the alarm, how does it know, why isnt it an hour earlier, why isnt it later.....
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Post by the light works on Aug 7, 2014 13:58:42 GMT
precisely - so is the dog reading environmental cues, or does it get properly hungry at a consistent time, or is it actually telling time.
what shall be the metric used to differentiate?
when it gets dark, the cat that hangs out in the bedroom starts bugging me to come to bed. is that telling time, or is it knowing that she gets her time with me when it gets dark?
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Post by OziRiS on Aug 7, 2014 21:11:10 GMT
The problem with this quickly becomes our definition of the concept of "telling time". We have to be aware that the way we tell time - seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on - is entirely a construct we as a species have made and that no other animal on the planet, or for that matter in the Universe at large, has any chance of knowing anything about. A dog or cat or cow would never be able to know that it's 3.27 p.m. on a wednesday, but it might be able to know that it's late in the day, but not quite evening yet, or even simpler: It's been a short/long time period since so-and-so.
The problem I see with this is the time constraints of the show. To test this properly, you'd have to let the test animals settle into some kind of routine thet they can tell time from and that's more than likely going to take more than 7-10 days.
Another thing is what you choose to use as an indicator that time is being told. You can't use feeding times, because a positive result might just be a question of the animal setting into a routine where it's fed at specific intervals, so its body adjusts and it gets hungry at those specific times. I know for a fact that's a thing for humans, since my eating habits change when I'm out of work, compared to when I have a job, since having a job often requires you to eat when it's break time, but not having one enables you to eat when you want to. When I have a job with set break times, after a month or so I start to get hungry about 15 minutes before break time. When I don't have a job, or I have one where I set my own break times, my feelings of hunger aren't as consistent.
I think a good indicator could be when someone leaves and comes back. As most of you know, my son isn't really mine. I'm "just" the step dad. Every other weekend he goes to his real dad's house and we have a standing agreement with him that we drop the boy off Friday at 3 p.m. and pick him up again Sunday at 3 p.m. We live about a 20 minute drive away from him and every weekend when the boy is over there, like clockwork, the dog starts getting fidgety at around 2.15 - 2.30 p.m. on Sunday (he usually comes with us in the car for both the drop and the pickup). It's like he knows it's time to go pick up the kid and if we've made special arrangements that particular weekend to go pick him up an hour or two later or when it's vacation time and he stays there for two weeks, the dog gets frustrated that we don't get up and head for the car.
I've seen and heard of similar situations where a dog seems to know it's right around now their owner usually comes home from work, even though the owner doesn't feed them the minute they come through the door, so there's no feeding routine to give the physical cue of a rumbling stomach.
Maybe do a test where some owners come to the shop in the morning before they go to work and leave their dogs with the crew in sort of a doggy daycare and then come pick them up again at a set time every weekday for a month. Do set feeding times, set play times and set walking times during the day, so the dogs get reference points fairly quickly. Get all of that out of the way, so the last two hours before the owners come to pick them up, they're denied any stimulation at all besides light, a bowl of water and a blanket to lie on and then observe them through cameras for those last two hours to see if there's a shift in behavior right around the time "mommy" usually comes to pick them up.
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 8, 2014 6:50:47 GMT
But isnt routine its self time specific....
If you have long periods of boredom, as a pet, intersected by regular feeds, at the same time, then the ability to extract "Its that time I will get fed" from boredom shows good time management skills, because we all know sat in a waiting room, time passes much slower?....
Fish do not have that skill.
My fish will follow anything that goes near the pond when they are hungry.....
This is different from the dog, who at the same time each night, if you are not in the Kitchen cooking, will come and say hello in a way that sort of says what are you dong here its meal time?....
When you eventually get to the kitchen he will sit and stare at the space where his food bowl should be.....
When you get the message, this is his way of saying "I'm Hungry".
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Post by the light works on Aug 8, 2014 13:42:40 GMT
But isnt routine its self time specific.... If you have long periods of boredom, as a pet, intersected by regular feeds, at the same time, then the ability to extract "Its that time I will get fed" from boredom shows good time management skills, because we all know sat in a waiting room, time passes much slower?.... Fish do not have that skill. My fish will follow anything that goes near the pond when they are hungry..... This is different from the dog, who at the same time each night, if you are not in the Kitchen cooking, will come and say hello in a way that sort of says what are you dong here its meal time?.... When you eventually get to the kitchen he will sit and stare at the space where his food bowl should be..... When you get the message, this is his way of saying "I'm Hungry". the next question would be, "can they read a clock?" I don't know the answer - but if their routine adjusts for the daylight tax days (when the government either withholds an hour, or returns it and tells you they gave you a free hour) then you know it is not just the routine. |
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Post by OziRiS on Aug 8, 2014 13:56:00 GMT
But isnt routine its self time specific.... If you have long periods of boredom, as a pet, intersected by regular feeds, at the same time, then the ability to extract "Its that time I will get fed" from boredom shows good time management skills, because we all know sat in a waiting room, time passes much slower?.... Fish do not have that skill. My fish will follow anything that goes near the pond when they are hungry..... This is different from the dog, who at the same time each night, if you are not in the Kitchen cooking, will come and say hello in a way that sort of says what are you dong here its meal time?.... When you eventually get to the kitchen he will sit and stare at the space where his food bowl should be..... When you get the message, this is his way of saying "I'm Hungry". Problem with that, as I stated previously, is that hunger is a physical feeling that can be adjusted to routine. If you feed every 8 hours or so, the body adjusts to that and naturally gets hungry every 8 hours, so the question quickly becomes if it's the dog's brain or the dog's stomach "telling time". We're looking at this from the perspective that dogs (and other animals) can tell time from a cognitive perspective, not a physical one. |
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Post by Lex Of Sydney Australia on Aug 12, 2014 6:56:29 GMT
I have NO idea if this is at all relevant, but my Mothers late cat (A purebred Burmese named Brown Balloo Nadarwa Biscuit Eater, or Boo Boo for short. We didn't name him he came with that name.) could tell you that in EXACTLY 5 minutes the pizza delivery guy would arrive. It didn't matter when you ordered the pizza (he could even be out of the house when you ordered it & come in after you were done & had hung up the phone). But 5 minutes before the pizza delivery guy arrived Boo Boo would go to the front door & plomp his fuzzy bum down look up at it & start meowing. You knew then you had 5 minutes till the pizza guy arrived. Boo Boo never failed to get it right as to when the pizza guy would arrive.
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 12, 2014 12:21:27 GMT
Was the cat telling time or detecting signs of the pizzas arrival before your family did? The sound of the pizza guys car, or the smell of melted cheese and a warm crust?  |
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Post by the light works on Aug 12, 2014 13:40:04 GMT
Was the cat telling time or detecting signs of the pizzas arrival before your family did? The sound of the pizza guys car, or the smell of melted cheese and a warm crust? or was it just that cats are psych otic? |
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Post by mrfatso on Aug 12, 2014 16:56:29 GMT
Oh they are certainly psychos alright, growing up we always had cats, one called Fluffy, was a cute Kitten, but later a ball of teeth and claws.
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 13, 2014 12:53:15 GMT
Cats do what cats do, and if you tread on it, it spoils your day.
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Post by the light works on Aug 13, 2014 13:54:59 GMT
Cats do what cats do, and if you tread on it, it spoils your day. but since they hide it so prey animals don't smell it as easily, you are more likely to tread on what dogs do. |
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 14, 2014 7:27:47 GMT
Cats do what cats do, and if you tread on it, it spoils your day. but since they hide it so prey animals don't smell it as easily, you are more likely to tread on what dogs do. Not if you keep Cats and no dogs in your house.... Although we did own a cat who tried to blame it on the dog. We didnt have a dog at that time..... Just a smart-[ass] cat?... |
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Post by Lex Of Sydney Australia on Aug 16, 2014 16:21:54 GMT
Was the cat telling time or detecting signs of the pizzas arrival before your family did? The sound of the pizza guys car, or the smell of melted cheese and a warm crust? We lived on a main road so we had a lot of traffic go past so I doubt it was the sound of the car. & if he'd smelt the pizza he would have sat & meowed at the door at the most a few seconds before the man knocked at the door with it, he'd always sit down & start meowing 5 minutes before the pizza came. We have no idea HOW he knew the pizza was 5 minutes away he just DID. It was quite uncanny. |
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Post by Lokifan on Aug 16, 2014 16:32:36 GMT
Here's a way to test it:
In the morning, call a friend/family who doesn't live with your family.
Tell them to order a pizza for you sometime that afternoon/night--leave the choice of time up to them, and completely hidden from your family.
Watch the cat and see what happens when the pizza guy shows up.
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