Animal Memory Quotes

Early experiences convinced me that animals can and do have quite distinct personalities.

I was a dog in a past life. Really. I'll be walking down the street and dogs will do a sort of double take. Like, Hey, I know him.

The Carrion Crow and Turkey-Buzzard possess great power of recollection, so as to recognise at a great distance a person who has shot at them, and even the horse on which he rides.

Elephants can remember, but we are human beings and mercifully human beings can forget.

I studied a lot of animal behavior and one of the things I find really interesting is the whole idea that animals are sensory based thinkers and I wrote about this in my book, Animals in Translation. That an animal's memory is not in words, they've got to be in pictures - it's very detailed so let's say the animal gets afraid of something - they'll get afraid of something that they're looking at or hearing, the moment the bad thing happens.

Any observer is an intruder in the domain of a wild animal and must remember that the rights of that animal supersede human interests. An observer must also keep in mind that an animal's memories of one day's contact might well be reflected in the following day's behavior.

Dogs remember every favor you ever do for them and store those events in a memory bank titled Why My Human Is A God.

Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.

Perhaps measuring animal intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence isn't the best litmus test.

Scientists have shown that pigs are capable of playing simple video games, learning from each other, and even learning names.

When we see animals doing remarkable things, how do we know if we're simply seeing tricks or signs of real intelligence? Are talented animals just obeying commands, or do they have some kind of deeper understanding? One of the biggest challenges for animal researchers is to come up with tests that can distinguish between the two.

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.

Of the seven experiments, the ones that have been most investigated so far have been the pets. The dogs who know when their masters for coming home, and the sense of being stared at.

With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.

I don't remember any blue poodles.

There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?

An animal’s memory is not in words, they’ve got to be in pictures – it’s very detailed so let’s say the animal gets afraid of something. Like, for example you beat the dog up and they're looking at you and your Nike shoes or any sneaker or anything like a Nike, he's likely to be afraid of that - so anything without that Nike wingtip, he's likely to be fine. If you think about it, that's a different picture, than a Nike type shoe. Its specific because its sensory based.

Experiments at Seattle aquarium prove that octopuses can tell individual humans apart - even when the people are dressed identically - just by looking up at them through the water.

You got to get away from words if you want to understand any animal. It thinks in pictures, it thinks in smells, it thinks in touch sensations - little sound bites like, it's a very detailed memory.

People didn't think animals thought or remembered or had minds! They most certainly do: any pet owner knows more than a lot of scientists about animals.