Can Animals Comprehend And Plan For the Future?

This is what I have been thinking for quite some time, but hadn't have that time to search for this info on the web. The last week I could manage to scoop some time out of my bustling schedule and got to learn about whether animals can perceive time and whether they can plan or comprehend things they might come across in future. I have made a post on my dog blog regarding how dogs perceive time. This post is all about whether animals are able to learn and plan without having an understanding of time.

Compared to us (human beings) animals have abilities to understand time to lesser extent. Humans have two distinctive abilities to comprehend time, viz. (1) ability to remember the sequence of events that had occurred in the past, and (2) ability to analyst the requirement that we may come across in the future. Experiments on working memory tests on animals have shown that animals also have these two abilities, but not as extensively as humans.

Researchers have experimented on the working memories (short term memories) and reference memories (long term memories) of animals in order to test how do animals remember the sequences of evens. Good news is that the animals performed quite well in those tests, but the researchers concluded that their memory faded out at a fast rate. According to the scientist William Roberts, who had experimented on animal memories, "animals were probably learning going from weakest memory to strongest memory, rather than actually 'learning' or 'remembering' a sequence."

Some of the other scientists who have been working on the similar kind of experiments, found that monkeys and pigeons did fairly good at the reference memories, which is the long term memories, in which they had been tested to check how well they could remember a sequence after a delayed time span between learning and testing. In this regarding Roberts said that they required extensive training session to learn these sequences. Roberts said, "the ability did not come naturally to them." Hence the researchers have concluded that animals would perceive time, but in a different way from humans. Compared to human beings animals have been seen to have a relatively less reliable and less sophisticated memory that help them to remember of sequence of events.

At the same time the researchers concluded that animals do not have good abilities to anticipate future needs, with which the researchers have drawn the conclusion that animals do not have any concept of future. Experiments on rates and pigeons have shown that they "chose a smaller immediate reward over the larger future reward", which directly proved that animals do not have ability to comprehend and plan the future. Another experimentation on primates had been carried out given a choice of "One (1) banana" and "Two (2) bananas". The primates picked the larger quantity - that is two bananas. Now when experiment had been carried out once again with five (5) and ten (10) bananas, in which the primates chose the lesser quantity, that is 5 bananas. Researchers William Roberts concluded that animals try to satisfy their immediate hunger, and do not have the ability to plan for the future.

Now all these experiments and their conclusions seem to be quite convincing. But if animals do not have the ability OR is they have less sophisticated ability to comprehend and plan for the future, why and how do ants tend to collect and gather enough food stuff before they go to hibernation during the winter?

Larger Mammals Have Smaller Litter Size

Hey… here’s something really interesting! I am sure most people in the animal world are unaware of the reason why small mammals have large litters. Have you ever thought why cats usually have larger litters than tigers? Smaller mammals usually have larger litters compared to the larger mammals. The reasons are best explained by the scientists who classified mammals into two distinctive categories, as per the ecological terms:

R-selected species: These are the small animals that have larger litters. The letter ‘R’ symbolizes higher reproductive rate. The adult members of these species usually invest relatively less time and effort in taking care to upkeep their offspring. The young ones of these species grow relatively faster than those of the K-selected species. The cycle repeats quite frequently, allowing them to become hugely populated within a short span of time. E.g: Rodents, like mice, rats.

K-selected species: These are the larger animals that have smaller litters. Unlike the ones that fall under the R-selected species, the K-selected ones are much bigger in size and have smaller litters. These animals usually spend more hours a day to care for their young ones, because the babies are not capable of caring themselves until they grow much older. They usually born blind and remain so for many weeks, which is why they bank on their mother for food and protections for comparative a longer span of time. The grow rate of these species relatively faster than those enlisted under the R-selected groups. The cycle is comparatively much slower… these animals are likely to have babies as frequent as the R-selected species, which is why these animals do not get over-populated.

When it comes to the litter size of mammals, one most obvious expression of reproductive activity is the number of babies born in a single litter. This varies among the species and even with species. The variation of the litter size, as a whole, arises from genetic and environmental impact. The difference among the eutherian mammals in the individual weight and number of their young at the birth are huge. Let us compare the two extremities among species. While mice give birth to young ones each weighing 1 grams, a whale gives birth to a baby that may weigh 1 tonne right after the birth. Now I have a couple of questions:

• Firstly, why does a single pattern of reproduction has such a huge variation?
• Secondly, if there’s such a huge variation, why isn’t it even more?

I found my answers here