ABSTRACT
Pi henomena studied in the lab would be of little interest if they also did not occur outside 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. Al though 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 animals 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, that evolved in environments that are more similar to current natural environments than they are to labora tory settings. This chapter has two goals: its main goal is to suggest through numerous ex amples how learning phenomena are manifested in the natural environment; the other goal is to suggest how these phenomena came about through evolution.
