There’s a word for thinking about things in the past, but I can’t remember it.
It seems at least one chimp was capable of planning for the future; and I don’t think you can put this behavior down to instinct:
My house beagle knows when it’s time to feed the cats. She starts whining when it’s time. The Siamese have us on tight schedules around here. Of course Beagle girl loves her food. So anything food related gets her worked up.
There’a guy that comes to our house once a month to trim our female poodle. The second time he came to our door to give her a trim, upon seeing him in our doorway, she immediately hid behind our couch. So she remembered the experience from a month back and could conceive that his presence meant a hair cut in her immediate future.
There are different kinds of “thinking about the future”.
Animals learn. And the process of learning is mainly figuring out patterns. What happened just before this other (meaningful) thing happened? Dogs, for example, amaze people when they seem to know what is going to happen next, but in many cases they are simply observing patterns that you are unconscious of. You put on lipstick before you go out. You get the luggage out when you are going away for awhile. Etc.
When my pony sees a hypodermic needle she starts shaking all over with fear. It’s not the sight of the needle that scares her, it’s what she believes, from past experience, is going to happen next.
Many animals can recognize quite long strings of events which have a meaningful piece at some point.
I think the way wild animals store food, make nests, dig a den to hibernate in, is more instinctive behavior which acts toward the future. But of course, as Gregory Bateson wrote, “instinct” is such a blurry explanatory convention that it really doesn’t explain much of anything.
I think some animals are quite capable of planning. For example the captive octopus who every day would wait until the researchers left for the night, squeeze out under the glass top of the aquarium (so handy being boneless), climb into other aquaria and eat the inhabitants and then, before morning, slide back into its own aquarium and look innocent. Jacques Cousteau told this story but I have read of other similar ones.
I don’t think that’s a great example. It could just as adequately be explained as an octopus that sees food in other tanks, spends all day wishing it could go get it but is afraid of the large apes walking around (octopodes are quite shy), but then when the apes are gone it’s free to satisfy its hunger. No real planning seems to be necessary.
Cogitare.
Our cat’s 401k is pitiful, if that’s any help.
A long time ago, like decades, I had a friend who built a timer and switch control for an automatic dog food dispenser for his dog. The switch would work only after a particular time of day, but would then work until the next time it was used, and then reset to next day at the set time. In other words, it would not dispense food unless the dog set it off some time after dinner time.
The dog’s behavior did not reflect any awareness of the time of day having an affect. It would try, once, when it wanted food. If it did not get food, it would come back later. It knew that if it had been away from home the switch might work, and it seemed to try fairly close to “feeding time” as well.
But the dog did learn the switch would not work if it had already worked “today.”
His water dish had a similar switch, which always worked, unless the reservoir (a gallon jug) was empty. He seemed to understand that his master would refill the water any time, but would not dispense an extra meal on request. (snacks and treats were hand fed, at times.)
Behaviorists are fairly weird.
Tris
Eh, so’s mine.
WAIT WHAT IS THAT SHINY THING
Humans also have the ability to anthropomorphize into the future.
Since we’re animals that think of the future, I would imagine we inherited thinking about the future from other animals that think about the future.
Humans are animals which are capable of doing many tasks which other animals aren’t capable of.
And vice versa
This isn’t my area of expertise, but from what I have read, the ability to plan for the future is present in great apes but not in monkeys. This indicates that the trait evolved after the evolutionary split between monkeys and apes. This is likely one of many cognitive traits that we inherited on our path down the hominid evolutionary branch.
Some bird species like ravens and crows have also demonstrated the ability to plan for the future.
Corvids (crows, ravens, jays, etc) have evolved many cognitive abilities that are similar to those found in apes, such as an understanding of cause and effect, planning for the future, and complex social structures. Since corvid brains are very different from primate brains, these cognitive abilities clearly developed independently.
Some corvids have also passed the mirror test. Great apes usually pass the mirror test, while monkeys tend to fail (again indicating that these cognitive abilities evolved after the ape/monkey split). Dolphins and orcas also usually pass the mirror test.