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. 2025 Jun 26;380(1929):20240108.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0108. Epub 2025 Jun 26.

Selection shapes diverse animal minds

Ellouise Leadbeater  1 , Alex Thornton  2
Affiliations

Selection shapes diverse animal minds

Ellouise Leadbeater et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

This special issue explores the evolution of cognitive diversity across the animal kingdom, challenging the value of approaches that have a basis in human psychology in favour of a perspective that embraces the multiple evolutionary endpoints that natural selection has produced. This approach centres around the key role of sensory processing as integral to cognition, rather than as something to be disentangled from it; around the relevance of so-called 'simple' processes; around the constraints that shape evolutionary trajectories and around the nonlinear nature of the selective environment. The field is advancing through approaches that span neuroscience, theoretical modelling, field studies, population genetics and more. By reframing cognition as a set of solutions to the natural world's many challenges, we move closer to understanding animal minds as reflections of the numerous ways life has evolved to make use of information.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Selection shapes diverse animal minds.'

Keywords: animal cognition; comparative cognition; learning; memory.

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Conflict of interest statement

This theme issue was put together by the Guest Editor team under supervision from the journal’s Editorial staff, following the Royal Society’s ethical codes and best-practice guidelines. The Guest Editor team invited contributions and handled the review process. Individual Guest Editors were not involved in assessing papers where they had a personal, professional or financial conflict of interest with the authors or the research described. Independent reviewers assessed all papers. Invitation to contribute did not guarantee inclusion.

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