While it seems to come  somewhat naturally for humans to anthropomorphise our animal friends (and enemies), and is most definitely a useful tool for humorists (people clothes on a monkey = always funny, ALWAYS), the truth of the matter is that we can never truly know what another species consciousness is like.  Many neuroscientists and philosophers working in Consciousness Studies would tell you that we can never truly know what other humans’ consciousness is like either.  But we do know now that animals probably do posess some kind of consciousness.  What sets us apart is our ability to be conscious of that consciousness and it’s processes and content.  We not only experience and think, we can think about thinking and experiencing.

Although we can never really know the truth about animal consciousness, new research shows that animals may indeed be able to think about what might have been should they have acted differently.  From John Tierny’s article in today’s NYTimes:

The latest data comes from brain scans of monkeys trying to win a large prize of juice by guessing where it was hidden. When the monkeys picked wrongly and were shown the location of the prize, the neurons in their brain clearly registered what might have been, according to the Duke University neurobiologists who recently reported the experiment in Science.

“This is the first evidence that monkeys, like people, have ‘would-have, could-have, should-have’ thoughts,” said Ben Hayden, one of the researchers. Another of the authors, Michael Platt, noted that the monkeys reacted to their losses by shifting their subsequent guesses, just like humans who respond to a missed opportunity by shifting strategy.

So, turns out when you discipline your dog after he knocks some houseplants over and he looks bummed, he might actually be bummed.  The article is here.