ABSTRACT
The results of natural history studies on vertebrate animals often suggest that these animals are more than simple stimulus-response creatures making appropriate responses to environmental stimuli. In some species, foraging, mating, territory selection, and predator avoidance behaviors, appear to require a complex set of decisions that suggest some higher level of cognition than normally accepted. Yet, naturalists who study and understand these behaviors find it virtually impossible to design experiments or make appropriate observations to critically test their assumptions and hypotheses about animal cognition. These assumptions and hypotheses are concentrated on the theme that animals seem to be making decisions that have, as a result, a probabilistic set of outcomes.
