Animals have an innate sense of time, study finds

It’s no secret to pet parents that when it comes to dinner, walks, and treats, fur babies definitely know when you’re running behind schedule. Well, as it turns out, your observations about your pup’s awareness of time are totally accurate. According to new research from Northwestern University, dogs can judge time thanks to a previously undiscovered set of neurons in their brains — and they definitely know when they’re being kept waiting.

Published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the new study says that animals have a clear sense of time. Researchers examined an area of the brain associated with memory and navigation in mice. The study’s authors claim that this area of the brain is associated with computing time.

“Does your dog know that it took you twice as long to get its food as it took yesterday? There wasn’t a good answer for that before,” lead study author Daniel Dombeck said in a press release. “This is one of the most convincing experiments to show that animals really do have an explicit representation of time in their brains when they are challenged to measure a time interval.”