Do Animals Procrastinate? Fascinating Facts That Will Blow Your Mind

If you are as curious as I am, you may have wondered if procrastination is a behavior that is exclusive to humans.

In other words, do animals experience procrastination? Do animals have the complexity of the human mind to even experience such an intricate behavior as procrastination?

Yes, there is scientific evidence that some animals do engage in procrastination. Experiments done on pigeons have shown that these animals choose to delay certain tasks that are deemed unpleasant.

Surprisingly, the way the pigeons behaved in the study was similar to how people procrastinate.

But can we generalize these results to all other animals, including pets? Do animals procrastinate the same way we do?

We’ll review the literature and scientific evidence to answer these intriguing questions.

If you want to find out more, keep reading.

Procrastination In Animals: Reality or Fiction!

First, you shouldn’t confuse procrastination with laziness.

Read our comprehensive article: Laziness Vs Procrastination: Understand the Difference (Take Our Quiz)

You can spot a lazy dog when you see one. Laziness is the unwillingness to put in any effort towards accomplishing a task. Animals can exhibit lazy behaviors that are usually quite obvious.

One of the most famous examples is the sloth. This animal is famous for moving very slowly and sleeping for up to 20 hours a day. Apparently, instead of evolving to eat more, sloths evolved to do less.

But the subject of this article is procrastination in animals, not laziness.

Procrastination, on the other hand, is a more complex behavior and includes deliberately and consciously delaying a task or activity. In procrastination, you are willing to put in the effort, but not at the moment.

The causes of procrastination are also complex and intertwined but are commonly attributed to some form of poor self-regulation, or, in other words, a lack of self-control.

When we look at the literature and scientific studies regarding procrastination in animals, we find very few studies tackling this subject.

All these studies were curiously done on pigeons.

Procrastination Experiment on Pigeons

Two studies on procrastination behavior of pigeons have been conducted, the first in 1996 by Mazur from the Connecticut State University and a second by Zentall in 2018.

We’ll not get into the complicated details of the study, but in the original 1996 study, researchers required pigeons to peck a key (task) in order to get food (reward) following different time intervals.

When given the choice between pecking the key early or later, researchers noticed that pigeons preferred to peck the key later.

Even when delaying resulted in more pecking (more work), pigeons still chose to defer the task.

This behavior has many similarities with procrastination in people. For example, you may still put off working on a school project until it is almost due, knowing that you will have to work harder and under more stress if you procrastinate.

An alternative explanation for the results is that the pigeons delayed the task not out of procrastination but because pecking later was close in time with the reward (food), so the association between action and reward became stronger.

Do Other Animals Procrastinate?

One question that pops up is whether the previous studies in pigeons can be generalized to other animals.

In other words, do other animals procrastinate like us.

Despite the debate over the underlying factors responsible for procrastination in humans vs. pigeons, it may be safe to say that other animals can exhibit the same procrastination behavior in pigeons. More studies, however, need to be conducted to confirm that hypothesis.

Despite the fact that the very few procrastination studies on animals were done only on pigeons, we can still extrapolate some conclusions from other studies that can give us some interesting clues on procrastination in the animal kingdom.

One clue about procrastination behavior in animals can be drawn from studies on self-control.

Numerous studies have shown that self-control is negatively correlated with procrastination, which means that people with high self-control procrastinate less and people with low self-control procrastinate more.

Now, there has fortunately been extensive research on animals’ impulsivity and self-control.

Do Animals Exhibit Self-Control?

Yes, research has shown that animals can exhibit self-control to varying degrees. Studies measuring self-control in different species, from crows to chimpanzees, showed that animals with bigger brains showed better self-control.

One way the researchers measure self-control in animals is through what’s called “delay of gratification” performance.

Delayed gratification is resisting the temptation of an immediate reward in anticipation of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future.

One famous experiment that was done on humans was the Stanford marshmallow experiment in 1972, where children were offered the choice between one small reward (marshmallow) or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. The study found that children who exerted more self-control and were able to wait longer for a better reward had better life outcomes and academic achievement.

Procrastination can also mean a poor ability to delay gratification. For instance, when you choose to watch your favorite Netflix show instead of studying, you’re failing to resist the immediate gratification (watching Netflix) for the future better reward (studying and succeeding academically).

Delayed Gratification in Animals

Delayed gratification experiments were done on animals to discover whether they could exert self-control the same way humans do.

In some of these experiments, animals were given the choice to either receive an immediate reward (a small portion of food) or wait some time for a better reward (a bigger portion or better-quality food).

Many species have shown varying degrees of impulse control; primates like bonobos and tamarinds showed self-control patterns similar to humans.Crows and ravens also did exceptionally well in impulse control experiments and were able to delay gratification for up to 10 minutes.

A 2020 study found that dogs also exhibited self-control, especially when compared to their cousins, wolves. In the experiment, dogs were able to wait an average of 66 seconds for the better reward, compared to wolves with only 24 seconds.

Self-Control in Animals Vs. Humans:

In a 2007 study comparing delayed gratification between apes and adult humans, it was found that chimpanzees were surprisingly better than adult humans at delaying gratification and exhibited more patience and self-control with regard to food.

In another interesting paper, the ability to delay gratification was compared between children and crows. Both did well on the tests, but there were some differences when the conditions of the experiment were changed.

So, What’s The Bottom Line?

Animal behavior research has shown that people and animals, especially our distant cousins, the primates, have a lot in common.

Procrastination is a relatively complex behavior, which makes it hard to study in animals. It also involves some type of projecting into the future, which is not easy to test on animals.

However, research on self-control and delayed gratification proved that animals can show impulse control, or lack thereof, just like us humans.

Does this mean that animals can also be prone to procrastination? Well, that seems possible. Although procrastination in animals may not be as complex as it is in humans, the experiment on pigeons, for instance, showed that animals can also be prone to putting off important tasks.

Key Takeaways:

Several experiments demonstrated that pigeons procrastinate just like humans. However, there is some debate about the underlying factors and motivations for procrastination in animals versus humans.

Aside from pigeons, many studies have looked at animals’ self-control, especially their ability to wait for a reward and control their impulses.

Research showed that dozens of species exhibit patterns of self-control that are quite similar to those found in humans. This is especially the case with primates and crows.

Different species have different amounts of self-control, and scientists have found a link between bigger brains and better impulse control.

If many animals can exert self-control, it is very possible that procrastination may also be prevalent in the animal kingdom, although not with the same complexity as it is in humans. More evidence is necessary to draw a definitive conclusion.

By Sam David

Published February 15, 2023