402 Animal Memory and Cognition
more-or-less general example of what Symons has in mind,
we might cite a belief that flows from the SSSM, that differ-
ences between individuals reared in different cultures are en-
tirely due to culture itself—that is, to learning (see Tooby &
Cosmides, 1992). According to this view, our species has a
nature, but that nature, except for a few simple instincts, is
entirely malleable. As indicated, evolutionary biologists and
psychologists suggest, on the other hand, that brains, both
human and animal, consist of many special-purpose devices,
some of which may be widely shared over species, others of
which may be common to only a few species, but that in any
case constrain how experience (culture in humans) will affect
the behavior of that species (see Figure 14.1).
WHAT IS ANIMAL COGNITION?
The question What is animal cognition?has at least two an-
swers. One is that it consists of all those topics treated in the
last few chapters of animal-learning textbooks that are other-
wise primarily concerned with Pavlovian and instrumental
conditioning. This would include such topics as serial learn-
ing counting, language acquisition, concept learning, and the
like. Another answer is that cognition may be identified with
particular processes such as information processing, internal
representations, attention, memory, and so on. Whatever
one’s approach to animal cognition, it is the case (as we will
attempt to demonstrate in this section) that distinguishing be-
tween the cognitive versus the noncognitive is difficult and in
some cases perhaps even arbitrary.
Consider the idea that cognition involves the internal pro-
cessing of information—a very reasonable suggestion. Keep
in mind, however, that there are behaviors under the control
of complex information processing that are not normally
classified as cognitive. For example, the hunting behavior of
bats, briefly described earlier, involves real-time computa-
tions of the prey’s distance, its speed of movement, its direc-
tion of movement, its moment-by-moment evasive actions,
and the like. Surely some of the bat’s hunting behavior is
learned: It may learn with experience to identify the prey’s
species by the configuration of the returning echo. Yet
equally surely, much of the bat’s complex, rapid information
process is “hardwired” into its brain. Nor is the bat an excep-
tion. Bees, as indicated, after locating a food source must fly
back to the hive where they communicate to their sisters the
direction and distance of the desired commodity by doing
what is called a dance that their sisters “comprehend”. Not
only are the bees engaging in complex information process-
ing, but the dance symbolizes or represents such parameters
as the direction and distance of the food source. Essentially,
the nervous systems of the watcher bees interpret particular
dance movements as indicators of the distance and direction
of the food sources.
Representation is involved when an isomorphism occurs
between different events, say, between brain or nervous-
system states and aspects of the environment. The bees’ rep-
resentations may be, relatively speaking, simple. Imagine,
however, if you will, how complex the bat’s auditory repre-
sentations of its prey must be. In real time it computes and
updates its prey’s location, speed, direction of movement,
and so on. As Dawkins (1976) has indicated, were bats able
to do so they might find our species’ reliance on visual pro-
cessing as strange and mysterious as we find their reliance on
auditory processing. Many researchers may be reluctant to
consider such behaviors as involving cognition, however, for
the following reasons. A hallmark of cognition according to
some, is that it allows animals to modify their behaviors to
deal with a changing and unpredictable environment. Cogni-
tion, according to this view, allows animals to behave in a
flexible manner in novel environments. Responses that are
hardwired, so to speak, cannot, properly speaking, be consid-
ered cognitive. Consider language in people, however. Ac-
cording to some of the major authorities in the field the
capacity to acquire language is innate in humans and can be
described as an instinct(e.g., Bickerton, 1998; Pinker, 1994).
Thus it is possible that understanding of, say, sonar use in
bats may contribute to better understanding of language ac-
quisition in humans, or, indeed, vice versa. On this basis, one
may suggest that too sharp a distinction between hardwired
behaviors, particularly complicated and elaborate ones, and
cognition may not be useful.
Decision making and problem solving may properly be re-
garded as cognitive activities—but who can doubt that bats
and bees (to use our familiar examples) are making numerous
decisions (to dive when prey dives) and solving significant
problems (to forage for food and return to hive to dance)
when engaged in their normal activities? Consider another
example of decision making. Male bower birds build large,
elaborate nests that they decorate with brightly colored ob-
jects in the hope of attracting a female. If the nest fails in this
regard, the male bird tears down the nest and builds a new
one. Nest building by bower birds improves with experience,
older birds building better nests than younger birds. Is bower
building, therefore, an instance of flexible decision-making
behavior in the face of novel circumstances, or is it merely
hardwired? In any event, a cognitive ethologist might impute
purpose and awareness to the bower birds’ nest building,
perhaps more purpose and awareness than some might
find reasonable. Yet, might we be equally unreasonable in
going to the other extreme, dismissing the male bower bird’s