198 
Regal 
Predictive Ability 
Ideally, the intensive forager has an ad- 
vantage if it has information not only about 
its own location but of its limitations and 
capacities. The “awareness” of itself would 
be important in “selecting” appropriate be- 
haviors for obtaining different kinds of prey. 
This is clear from our own experience, but 
we can reach the same conclusion from math- 
ematics (game theory). Knowledge of one’s 
own “position” together with that of other 
players in a game allows a “game of perfect 
information,” and “in such games there is 
always a ‘best way to play,’ which can be 
specified without mentioning chance” (Rapo- 
port, 1966). 
There are obvious advantages to capacities 
such as “reason” that would allow the indi- 
vidual to predict events in novel or complex 
situations, where simple conditioning would 
be inadequate to allow predictions that might 
prevent escape of prey or injury to self. 
Any improvement in perceived predicta- 
bility is, of course, likely to fall short of 
absolute predictability. Even in literate adult 
humans there is a considerable gap. Mathe- 
matics and science have great power pre- 
cisely because they can narrow the gap. 
This discussion emphasizes again the par- 
ticular character of the behaviors which I 
suggest allow coarse-grain responses. It also 
leads to the specific prediction that if the 
rudiments of “reason” or “self-awareness” 
are to be found among any lizards, it is likely 
to be among varanids or teiids. 
CONCLUSIONS 
The Paleozoic-Mesozoic adaptive radia- 
tions of diapsid and mammal-like reptiles 
took place in plant communities that were 
considerably more simple than those of the 
late Cretaceous-Tertiary in which modern 
mammal and lizard groups have evolved. 
Throughout the (late) Cretaceous and 
Tertiary there has been a dramatic increase 
in the numbers of plant species, and ecosys- 
tems have grown much more complex (Dorf, 
1955 ; Axelrod, 1974 ; Regal, 1977 ; Hickey 
and Doyle, 1977). 
I see “intelligence” as reflecting a loose 
“federation” of mental traits — each has a 
role in reducing the perceived randomness of 
encounters with, and captures of, rare or 
patchily distributed resources in complex 
environments. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise 
that the large brains of modern mammals 
apparently did not evolve among the mam- 
mal-like reptiles in their 100-plus million 
years on an earth with relatively simple 
ecosystems. 
Some lizards have penetrated active 
forager “adaptive zones” but not to the ex- 
tent that mammals have. Perhaps their five- 
chambered hearts would not support both 
continuous activity and endothermy and still 
allow competition with mammals which have 
their complete double circulations. 
Whatever the exact evolutionary causes 
for the relative differences between the be- 
havior of reptiles and mammals, a major 
point to stress is that reptiles include forms 
with a diversity of mental strategies for 
foraging. Modern reptiles may provide good 
models not only of the primitive “Reptile 
brain” upon which the Paleomammalian and 
Neomammalian brains were layered in evolu- 
tion (MacLean, 1973, this volume), but of 
transitional stages in the development of 
higher processes. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Much of my thinking on the subject of foraging 
behavior and predation has benefitted from discus- 
sions with H. B. Tordoff. I thank him for these and 
for comments on the manuscript. I also thank the 
following friends for discussions and/or for reading 
portions of the manuscript: G. Bartholomew, A. 
Bennett, E. Birney, W. Dawson, T. Eakin, C. Gans, 
L. Garrick, G. Gundy, B. Heinrich, J. Lang, P. Licht, 
G. Northcutt, R. Phillips, J. Roth, R. Sloan, R. Steb- 
bins, R. Taylor, H. Tordoff, V. Tucker and E. White 
and the editors. 
I owe a very special debt to the late Raymond B. 
Cowles not only for comments on the manuscript but 
for encouragement and inspiration throughout my 
career. 
This paper has benefitted greatly from a post- 
doctoral traineeship in mental health (PHS6TIMH 
416) at the Brain Research Institute, U.C.L.A. 
