Well there's the dumbest thing I've heard all day...and Democratic convention is on!
Seriously. Why do you think it's more effective to house break a dog when you catch them in the act?
It's called associative learning, and Pavlov gave us the most insightful clues through conditioned response experiments.
I remember the movie
Day of the Dolphin, where they explained that the dolphins had no conceptual understanding of hypotheticals. Something either is, or it is not. There is no abstract idea of "suppose something were to be". Yeah, it was a fictional movie, but the explanation stuck with me because it made sense.
My mom had a cat that her brother tortured, including dunking it in the bathtub in a pillow case. One day, as the cat was sleeping on the table by the front door, the brother came in. The cat realized who it was and scratched the blood out of his arm. He then leapt to my mom's lap for safety.
It wasn't revenge for past acts, but fear of him from repeated abuse. Pure conditioned response. But people who don't get it would call it payback.
People tend to give animals too many human characteristics like projecting their own feelings to non-domesticated animals. "That poor elephant has worked enough hours today. He needs sleep." Right.
