Telescoping effect

Biological Parallel

Animals compress time for recent salient events—bears remember honey tree blooms as more recent than actual because vivid memories feel temporally closer. Ground squirrels misdate cache locations, telescoping events from 60 days ago to feel like 30 days when the cache contained high-value food. This is temporal compression based on salience: important patterns get marked 'relevant now' regardless of actual timing. Bees visiting highly productive flower patches return sooner than the patch's actual depletion timeline warrants—temporal telescoping drives premature revisits. Humans telescope dramatic events closer: asked when 9/11 occurred, people in 2011 estimated 8.5 years ago (true value: 10 years). The telescoping effect reveals temporal tagging serves prediction, not chronology: recent-feeling memories signal 'this pattern still applies' more than accurately dating the event.