Animals can think about the past and future.

This New York Times articlemay not appear like big news to you, but the inventor of General Semantics (Alfred Korzybski) considered the difference between humans and other animals to be that humans were capable of remembering past events and predicting and planning for further events. This ability to remember the past, live in the present and plan for the future Korzybski called "Time binding."

According to this New York Times science article, experimental science has pretty clearly proven that some animals are also capable of time binding.

New studies suggest that the two directions of temporal travel are intimately entwined in the human brain. A number of psychologists argue that re-experiencing the past evolved in our ancestors as a way to plan for the future and that the rise of mental time travel was crucial to our species’ success. But some experts on animal behavior do not think we are unique in this respect. They point to several recent experiments suggesting that animals can visit the past and future as well. [Snip]

Dr. [Nicola] Clayton began to test western scrub jays to see if they met any of the criteria for episodic memory. The jays can hide several thousand pieces of food each year and remember the location of each one. Dr. Clayton wondered if scrub jays simply remembered locations, or if they remembered the experience of hiding the food.

She ran an experiment using two kinds of food: moth larvae and peanuts. Scrub jays prefer larvae to peanuts while the larvae are still fresh. When the larvae are dead for a few hours, the jays prefer peanuts. Dr. Clayton gave the birds a chance to hide both kinds of food and then put them in another cage. She later returned the birds to their caches, in some cases after four hours and in other cases after five days.

The time the scrub jays spent away from their caches had a big effect on the type of food they looked for. The birds that waited four hours tended to dig up larvae, and the birds that had to wait for five days passed the larvae by and dug up peanuts instead. (To make sure they were not just picking up the smell of rotten larvae and avoiding those spots, Dr. Clayton dumped out the caches as soon as the birds had made them, and filled all of them with fresh sand.) [Snip]

“We tested squirrel monkeys to see if they could anticipate the future, and to our surprise it looks like they could,” said Dr. William Roberts, a comparative psychologist at the University of Western Ontario. He and his colleagues ran a test in which they offered squirrel monkeys a choice between one piece of date or four. Not surprisingly, the monkeys took four.

But the scientists then began to take away water from the monkeys before they offered the choice. If the monkeys took four pieces, the scientists kept the water away for three hours. If the monkeys took one, the scientists returned the water in half an hour. The monkeys learned to choose one date. Even though they were not thirsty at the time, they anticipated becoming thirsty in the future. (If the scientists stopped withholding water, the monkeys went back to picking four pieces of dates instead of one.)

Dr. Clayton recently tested her scrub jays for foresight. She and her colleagues put the birds in three adjoining compartments for six days. Each morning the birds were shut for two hours in one of two rooms. In one room they got nothing to eat. In the other room, they got powdered pine nuts (the scrub jays can eat the powder, but they cannot cache it). For the rest of the day, each bird could move around all three rooms and enjoy more powdered nuts.

On the seventh day, the scientists switched the powdered pine nuts with real ones. If the birds were so inclined, they could cache the pine nuts in ice cube trays the scientists put in the two morning rooms. “If I’m a bird, what I could do is take some of the provisions and hide it in there so that if I do wake up there in the morning, I can get my own breakfast,” Dr. Clayton said.

Dr. Clayton found that the birds put over three times more pine nuts in the no-breakfast room than in the breakfast room. She argues that the results mean that birds can take action for their future needs, knowing what they’ll need and where they’ll need it.

Other experts on animal behavior say that the study is compelling.

So apparently Korzybski's "time binding" is not, itself, the distinction between humans and animals, but "Episodic Memory" may be. Go read the article for the meaning of "episodic Memory" before the NY Times hides this excellent article behind its subscription wall.

Oh, and about General Semantics - when I get some kind of links to a bookseller back, that's why I list "Language in Thought and Action" by S. I. Hiakawa on my books to put in your library list in the left column this on-line magazine.