ABSTRACT
The papers at this conference on animal cognition explore selected, measurable or observable aspects of species memory, problem-solving capacity and neurological function. To that extent they are inquiries into the range and variety of species potential capacity. The capacities and behaviors being studied and measured, however, do not represent the range of adaptive capacities and behaviors used in the wild or that range of potential capacities available to a species, of which only a part can be used in any temporal context. In biological evolution, natural selection probably occurs as much for the range of “potential variable capacity” as for the structures of morphology and the patterned structures of species behavior.
