Do Dogs Understand Time

 Dogs don’t have watches or keep day planners, so how do they track the passing of time? Scientists have a few ideas.
First, animals and other organisms have an internal clock of sorts called a circadian rhythm, a roughly 24-hour cycle in their physiological processes that responds to cues like the cycle of light and darkness. Instead of knowing what hour meals are served or ticking off units of time in their heads, dogs may be keeping track of time using this rhythm, responding to a physiological state they reach at a particular time of day, and associating it with a particular event, like dinner.

Alternatively, “animals might use markers in their daily life to keep track of time, such as position to the sun in the sky,” . Wynne a vet suggests that dogs may also simply pick up on social cues that tell them something is about to happen. Dogs are “watching everything you do for some clue that something is going to happen that’s going to matter to them,” he says. These cues don’t necessarily indicate to them what time it is but are predictors that an important event is close at hand.

Then there’s an interesting idea suggested by dog cognition researcher Alexandra Horowitz in her recent book BEING A DOG. Horowitz thinks that dogs might be able to smell time, in a way. As scents come and go and move around the house during the day, dogs may use the presence, absence, or strength of a particular scent to track time and figure out how long ago something happened or how close they are to a future event. If you feed your dog on a regular schedule or leave for work at the same time every day, your dog may anticipate the next meal or your arrival home based on the strength of the food scent remaining in their bowl or your scent lingering by the front door.

When it comes to keeping track of longer lengths of time, dogs and other animals may have more trouble. Just as they might use certain daily cues to mark time during a single day, Roberts thinks they could use daily cycles to keep track of more extended time. “However, humans remember important events by assigning dates and times of day to them,” he says. “Without our time technology devices, it’s hard to see how animals could do this.”

Dogs might be able to figure out what time dinner is, then, but don’t expect them to know when Christmas or their birthday is coming up.