Although as dog owner’s we want to believe that our pets remember every single detail of the life we share together, that may not be the case.
A new study suggests that your dog’s short term memory isn’t very good, along with the memories of 25 other animal species, according to the Huffington Post.
“When it comes to short-term memory, it seems to work almost the same for all animals,” stated Dr. Johan Lind, a professor of ethology at Stockholm University in Sweden and the study’s lead author, in a statement.
He continued, “It’s a bit surprising that apes do not remember better than rats, but the results are clear. Human memory stands out because it is so susceptible, anything seems to stick in the memory for a very long time.”
The recent study has found that the average short-term memory span of animals was 27 seconds, according to National Geographic News. Dogs reportedly forget an event within two minutes.
The findings were reportedly drawn from data from nearly a hundred studies of captive animals that used a memory test of recent events, known as the delayed matching-to-sample method. The method reportedly involves showing an animal a visual stimulus, such as a red circle, then showing the red circle again with another sample stimulus, such as a blue square.
The animal reportedly has to select the original sample it saw with the incentive of food.
In the analysis of these memory tests, bees’ memories reportedly lasted about 2.5 seconds and chimps about 20 seconds. Dogs were reportedly still at the top when it came to having longer short-term memory.
“The data tells us that animals have no long-term memory of arbitrary events,” explained Lind.
He added, “We think humans’ ability to remember arbitrary events is unique.”