In the absence of any social influences on learning, learning in our model is composed of (i) exploration, (ii) skill learning, and (iii) reinforcement learning about rewards associated with resources. All foragers start life without any knowledge about resources, and so do not have any expectation about energy rewards (a ir=0) nor any resource processing skill. To enable foragers to sample (partially) unfamiliar resource types, and hence to start learning, we implemented exploration. After processing resource items, foragers develop skill, which increases the rewards they can obtain from resources items of that type. After consuming resource items, foragers develop expectations about rewards via reinforcement, and can use those to decide what to eat. Note that for simplicity we do not include ‘forgetting’, and acquired skills and reward estimates are maintained indefinitely. We do not expect this to affect the results qualitatively.