Monday, May 05, 2008

Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better - New York Times

Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better - New York Times: "Dr. Kawecki suspects that each species evolves until it reaches an equilibrium between the costs and benefits of learning. His experiments demonstrate that flies have the genetic potential to become significantly smarter in the wild. But only under his lab conditions does evolution actually move in that direction. In nature, any improvement in learning would cost too much."

Intriguing article.