Even a Good Dog Doesn’t Have Much of a Good Memory
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iStock/Thinkstock(STOCKHOLM) — Your dog might be a good boy but boy, don’t count on him to remember too much.
That’s the advice from Stockholm University and Brooklyn College researchers who conducted memory experiments on various animals as well as birds and insects and yes, people too.
Overall, the average memory for all animals is around 27 seconds. Surprisingly, the memory of chimps only lasted 20 seconds, worse than that of rats. Humans were the best, thankfully, remembering stimulus from two days earlier.
As for dogs, the best they could do was remember an event from two minutes earlier, which was at the high end. Dogs actually are very good when it comes to specialized memories, such as where you hid a treat or toy.
However, don’t expect them to remember a visit to the park. They just don’t have the capacity to recall events, which may be a blessing in disguise if you got chased out of the park for not keeping your mutt on a leash.
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