The socioecology of primate cognition

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It is generally agreed that primate brains and cognition are, in large measure, a product of social life. There is less agreement on both the particular nature of this social cognition and how we would recognise it if we were to observe wild primates for whom, after all, it has had the most evolutionary importance.   We argue that primate cognition has not been selected to allow animals to plan ahead by shoring up valuable relationships. It is, instead, an ability to respond rapidly to changing circumstances, without regard for the future, and to make use of the structure of both the social and physical worlds to reduce the cognitive load of decision-making.   To assess the accuracy of this perspective, our research program sets out to observe two monkey species in the wild in order to test a range of predictions about how individuals tap into available information in the social and physical environments and the extent to which their behaviour accommodates it. It builds on earlier theoretical and empirical work by concentrating on three different questions: How monkeys decide where to go each day and how they coordinate their movement; how females use grooming as a commodity with which to trade and how its value is regulated; how females regulate the reproductive behaviour of males and other females and how their ability to do so is set by the local environment.   This is essentially basic, academic research that has implications for the way we view human cognition.