Adaptations to Predators and Prey

H. Clark Barrett

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Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior Primate Behavior and Ecology Child and Animal Learning Development

Abstract

Humans carry with them sophisticated perceptual and inferential machinery for dealing with predators and prey. This chapter reviews strands of research from many fields that are beginning to uncover the design features of this machinery. Predators and prey were important agents of selection on ancestral humans. The chapter first discusses the strategic problems involved in predator evasion and prey capture. It then focuses on predator-prey adaptations that are part of the agency system, a constellation of adaptations for detecting, reasoning, and making decisions about intentional agents. The predator-prey inference system uses internal knowledge and goal states of predators and prey to guide behavioral decision making. To understand the kinds of cognitive capacities that predators and prey would have selected for, it is useful to consider the strategic problems involved in predator evasion and prey capture and to compare and contrast these with other problems that ancestral foragers would have faced.

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References

1986Culture and the Evolutionary Process 1992The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture 1985Conceptual Change in Childhood 1995Mindblindness 1944An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior 1989The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task 1990How Monkeys See the World 1995Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age

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