“According to the 20157-2018 APPA National Pet Owners Survey, 68% of U.S. households own a pet, which equates to 84.6 million homes” (Pet Industry). With most of America owning a pet the questions that arises from owners is do other animals have mental imagery? Mental imagery exists in household pets such as: dogs and birds. Mental imagery, however, is not limited to just household pets, there is also evidence that it is present in wild animals such as: dolphins and bats. The way that animals use mental imagery is different than that of humans use. Humans use mental imagery every day in any possible situation. If someone were to be asked did they leave the stove on, one may try to mentally imagine their stove at home to remember whether they turned it off. The
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Other animals have a greater mental capacity than most people expect them to possess. The way to change this thinking is to educate people on animal’s mental capabilities and get people thinking about animals in a better light. “To know that an object’s existence does not depend on our ability to sense it at the moment” was labeled as object permanence by Jean Piaget (Coren 2014). One way animals use this is in the way they hunt. While they are doing so, when they lose sight of their meal, they create mental images to remember what they are hunting and visualizing where it could be hiding. If they did not create mental images, once the prey disappeared the animal would forget what exactly it was chasing. Dogs show this when they are playing with their toys and it rolls under the couch or a person hides it behind their back. The animal knows what they are playing with and what it looks like. There are many different experiments were scientists are testing whether animals have mental imagery by comparing animals to children. Formal laboratory tests have been performed with the idea of object permanence by Gagnon
Other animals have a greater mental capacity than most people expect them to possess. The way to change this thinking is to educate people on animal’s mental capabilities and get people thinking about animals in a better light. “To know that an object’s existence does not depend on our ability to sense it at the moment” was labeled as object permanence by Jean Piaget (Coren 2014). One way animals use this is in the way they hunt. While they are doing so, when they lose sight of their meal, they create mental images to remember what they are hunting and visualizing where it could be hiding. If they did not create mental images, once the prey disappeared the animal would forget what exactly it was chasing. Dogs show this when they are playing with their toys and it rolls under the couch or a person hides it behind their back. The animal knows what they are playing with and what it looks like. There are many different experiments were scientists are testing whether animals have mental imagery by comparing animals to children. Formal laboratory tests have been performed with the idea of object permanence by Gagnon