Chapter 26 - Neuroethology

Summary

The focus of neuroethology is on how neural systems subserve behaviors that an animal performs in its natural habitat. In this chapter, the author first discusses how the tension between the inward- and outward looking approaches of neuroethology may be resolved through excising bits of the world and encapsulating them into virtual reality apparatuses in the laboratory. Then, the author argues that results from neuroethology do, in fact, relate to cognition, and collects results from studies of morphological computation that expose the computational role of shape and structure in animal bodies in adaptive behavior. He describes some recent results concerning the neuroethology of prey-capture behavior that may give insight into the origin of the paradigmatically cognitive faculty of planning. The author argues that the evolution of sensing systems that enable animals to perceive their environment far beyond the bounds of where they are immediately moving.