A major area of investigation in evolutionary biology focuses on understanding how intelligent behaviors first evolved. We have evidence in the fossil record that demonstrates an apparent increase in the upper bounds of organismal complexity over time, but the levels of intelligence displayed by those organisms is less clear. For example, the progression of behaviors registered in trace and other fossils from the Ediacaran period have inspired intense speculation as to the cognitive capacity of animals leading up to the Cambrian Explosion. While it is challenging to get a more detailed window into what actually transpired hundreds of millions of years ago, computational Artificial Life techniques allow us to conduct empirical studies under analogous conditions and examine the patterns by which intelligent behaviors arise. In a series of experiments using the Avida platform, we evolved digital organisms with simple sensory and locomotory potential that were capable of increasingly complex cognitive abilities, spanning from efficient patch harvesting to associative learning and nonelemental learning. The patterns of the evolutionary sequences of these organisms are reminiscent of those found in Precambrian fossils, and allow us to start refining our ideas about the evolutionary origins of intelligence.

A common idiom in biology education states, Eyes in the front, the animal hunts. Eyes on the side, the animal hides. In this paper, we explore one possible explanation for why predators tend to have forward-facing, high-acuity visual sys- tems. We do so using an agent-based computational model of evolution, where predators and prey interact and adapt their behavior and morphology to one another over successive generations of evolution. In this model, we observe a coevolutionary cycle between prey swarming behavior and the predators visual system, where the predator and prey continually adapt their visual system and behavior, respectively, over evolutionary time in reaction to one another due to the well-known predator confusion effect. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the predator visual system is what drives this coevolutionary cycle, and suggest that the cycle could be closed if the predator evolves a hybrid visual system capable of narrow, high-acuity vision for tracking prey as well as broad, coarse vision for prey discovery. Thus, the conflicting demands imposed on a predators visual system by the predator confusion effect could have led to the evolution of complex eyes in many predators.