Dogs can remember all the times you treated them badly, scientists claim
A new study published in Current Biology draws similarities between the way in which humans and dogs form memories
DOGS have an ability to remember when they were treated poorly by their owners, scientists have claimed.
A new study published in Current Biology suggests that dogs have "episodic memories", allowing them to mentally travel back in time and recall previous events.
This ability, which researchers believe is a sign of self-awareness in the animals, also allows them to relive the associated emotions with that memory.
Claudia Fugazza from the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group in Budapest, Hungary, carried out a study on 17 dogs to arrive at the conclusion.
She used a trick called "Do as I do" in which the dogs were asked to watch a human perform an action, before being told to repeat it themselves.
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The study asked them to stand on a table, sit on a chair, jump over obstacles and touch an umbrella.
Later, the animals were shown an action, but instead of being asked to perform it right away, they were told to lie down.
After some time had passed, a trainer would then shout: "Do it" and the dogs, after a slight pause, would repeat the action.
What researchers wanted to show was that dogs had the ability to recall events, even if they were not crucial or relevant to the present.
Speaking to Miss Fugazza said: "The study of episodic-like memory in non-human animals is particularly challenging because it implies assessing a mental state: incidental encoding... of an event when it is not known that it is important to remember it.
"Most scientists agree that incidental encoding can be assumed if the recall test is unexpected, because in this case the subject does not expect to be required to remember the event later, thus it does not know the event is important.
"Our study is the first to test whether pet dogs in their own natural environment can remember complex and content-rich events that are close to real life situations."
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