Chapter 8 Is Animal Learning Optimal?

Optimization theory has always been the first choice for understanding adaptive systems. The behavior of animals, both learned and instinctive, is clearly adaptive. Even before Darwin, biologists noted the close match between the form and behavior of animals and the “conditions of existence, ” the environment—the niche as it would now be called—in which they live. And utility maximization was until quite recently the predominant approach in neo-classical economics. But since Darwin, biologists have known that the form and behavior of organisms is quite often not optimal, in any reasonable sense. The human appendix, the peacock’s ungainly tail, and the vestigial legs of snakes are clearly not optimal: humans, peacocks, and snakes would clearly live longer and move more efficiently without these redundant appendages. But what of behavior? Economics is a pretty successful social science and, in the 1970s, psychologists and behavioral ecologists had high hopes that these techniques could shed light on animal learning and behavior (Krebs and Davies 1978; Staddon 1980). But this hope also had to be given up. This articl