When my dog brings me a ball, drops it in front of me, pushes it towards me with his nose, and stares at it, I'm pretty sure he imagining me throwing it.

When I pick the ball up and he gets in a "ready to chase" posture, or alternatively runs to the other side of the room in preparation for catching it, I know he's imagining me throwing it.

[–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yea, you can not really predict the future, if you can not imagine. And without it being able to predict the future, a dog would never be able to be trained.

So, any animal that you can teach something through potential treat must be able to imagine, I would assume.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 points 19 hours ago

Read the article, the headline isn't great. This is about playing pretend with imagined objects.