Neuroethological investigations of mammalian and avian auditory systems have documented species-specific specializations for processing complex acoustic signals that could, if viewed in abstract terms, have an intriguing and striking relevance for human speech sound categorization and representation. Each species forms biologically relevant categories based on combinatorial analysis of information-bearing parameters within the complex input signal. This target article uses known neural models from the mustached bat and barn owl to develop, by analogy, a conceptualization of human processing of consonant plus (...) vowel sequences that offers a partial solution to the noninvariance dilemma the locus equations orderly output constraint”) is hypothesized based on the notion of an evolutionarily conserved auditory-processing strategy. High correlation and linearity between critical parameters in the speech signal that help to cue place of articulation categories might have evolved to satisfy a preadaptation by mammalian auditory systems for representing tightly correlated, linearly related components of acoustic signals. (shrink)