ABSTRACT
Phenomena studied in the lab would be of little interest if they did not also occur outside of the lab. Thus, we turn now to the question of how the learning principles and phenomena discussed in previous chapters apply to animals in their natural environments. Although much is known about the behavior of animals in their natural environments, little is known about how learning contributes to this behavior. This is because natural environments are so complex that many instances of learning go unobserved and unrecorded, even when scientists are observing the animal’s behavior closely. It would be strange, however, if any phenomenon observed under controlled laboratory conditions did not manifest itself, in some way, in other situations. This is especially true of phenomena like those of learning, which evolved in environments that are more similar to current natural environments than they are to laboratory settings. This chapter has two goals: its main goal is to suggest through numerous examples how learning phenomena are manifested in the natural environment; the other is to suggest how these phenomena came about through evolution.
