Modules
An experiment by Joshua New tested a theory developed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby (”C&T”), with whom he collaborated on the experiment. C&T suggested that some tasks are so important and so universal that you would expect to find specially evolved “modules” to handle them.
(They found evidence to support the existence of such modules in areas of human relations such as the perception of fairness.)
Dr New showed volunteers pairs of photographs. The photos in each pair were identical except that one object had changed its orientation or had been removed altogether, and the volunteers had to work out what had changed.
Changes concerning animals were significantly easier to detect than those concerning cars. 100% of volunteers noticed the movement of an elephant in the African bush. Only 72% noticed the movement of a minivan in a similar piece of bush. And that was despite the fact that the image of the van was somewhat larger in the photograph than the image of the elephant, and that the minivan was red, not grey.
This highly honed ability to notice animal activity (it also applies to small familiar animals, such as pigeons) argues that an animal-monitoring module is innate in the brain.
“More news from the savannah,” The Economist