Animal tales

My working hypothesis is that animals perceive and think about the world in broadly similar ways to us. The more different they are from us, the more different their perceptions and corresponding mental processes (anecdotal evidence : butterflies). That no other animal has created technologies comparable to our own is good evidence that their thought processes are different in some way, but it is at best weak evidence that there is some fundamental difference. Human intellect might be fundamentally different in one or more ways, or it might be basically similar to animals but with some (or all) aspects simply turned up to 11. I don't see any reason to suppose that episodic memories would be a key difference between us and them - the ability to remember what happened in the past doesn't prevent some people from being markedly less intelligent than some animals.

First, they trained 13 rats to memorise 12 odours. They built a special rat ‘arena’ with 12 stops, numbered 1 to 12, each scented with a different odour. When the rat identified the odour in a particular stop on the route, such as second-to-last or fourth-to-last, it received a reward. Then the researchers changed the number of odours and watched to see if the training had taken hold: would the rats identify the second-to-last and fourth-to-last odour in the sequence, even if the number of odours was different? This ensured that the rats were identifying the odours according to their position in the sequence, not just by scent. 

After a year of these tests, the team found that the rats aced the task about 87 per cent of the time. Subsequent tests confirmed that their memories stuck with them, and withstood interference from other memories. What’s more, when the researchers temporarily dialled down the hippocampus, the rats performed poorly, further confirming that it was, indeed, episodic memory on which the rats had relied. Studies in dolphins by other researchers in 2018 showed that the hippocampus fired up when the animals were replaying a memory, confirming that it coordinates memory replay and further challenging Tulving’s view that the hippocampus in animals can’t handle episodic memories.

Animals do have memories, and can help us crack Alzheimer's - April Reese | Aeon Ideas

For almost as long as modern science has been around, the idea that animals can remember past experiences seemed so preposterous that few researchers bothered to study it. Surely only humans, with our big, sophisticated brains, could be capable of 'episodic' memories - recalling a trip to the grocery store last Saturday, for example.