It is called “episodic memory” to that type of memories of our biography that we associate with contextual and emotional details: the weather, what we ate, what we were wearing, how we reacted to the news … Losing them is one of the first manifestations of the Alzheimer’s disease, and biologists and ethologists are hotly debating whether it is a faculty that other animals also have , because it would entail possessing a level of self-awareness generally only attributed to humans or, at best, higher primates .
According to specialists, some types of magpie, rats or great apes also form complex memories, but they are always related to survival actions, such as locating food or defending themselves from predators . The doubt is that if it also works in other circumstances not so vital, spontaneously.
Well, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology , dogs could have something at least similar to our episodic memory. The researchers taught the dogs to repeat the behavior of the handlers to the voice of “Do it!” If the person jumped, the dog must also jump. They were then trained to lie down when they saw their masters perform a certain action, such as opening an umbrella.
The difference is that some time later – from a minute to an hour later – they were yelled “do it!”: This forced them to remember what the trainer had done, although they had not had the explicit need to hold him back . The dogs successfully imitated their masters 33 of the 35 times they were commanded.
The results of this experiment indicate, experts believe, that dogs remember in a similar way to their owners and that other animals with sophisticated cognitive abilities, such as parrots, dolphins or killer whales, may also have episodic memory . New studies will show if they are right.
