 The idea that simpler explanations ought to be preferred is viewed by many as self-evident, a result of applying Ockham’s Razor to the study of animal cognition, and the claim that an explanation is “simpler” or “more parsimonious” is often offered as the equivalent to “End of discussion!” However, in the past couple of decades philosophers have argued that this preference for simplicity in comparative cognition is much more problematic than it may initially seem. For one, many have argued that there is no reason why a simpler explanation will be more likely to be true in this context. Simpler explanations may have other virtues, such as being easier to understand or to describe, but since animal behavior is the result of natural selection, and not the outcome of a process of intelligent design that infallibly delivers optimal solutions, there is no reason to think that it is more likely to be caused by simpler processes (Mikhalevich, Powell, &amp; Logan 2017). In fact, some have argued that when scientists claim a preference for simpler explanations, it is actually some other consideration that is doing the epistemic work, like the idea that we should avoid anthropomorphic descriptions of animal behavior (Fitzpatrick 2017a; Sober 1998). We see this, for instance, in Shettleworth’s (2010a) equation of simpler explanations with associative ones. She argues that associative explanations are to be preferred, but this is not a result of a preference for simplicity per se, but stems from the idea that association is phylogenetically widespread in the animal kingdom, and so associative explanations are, in her view, more likely to be true.