Okay, this is really cool. While Game Theory is usually applied to economics, scientists have now successfully used Game Theory to predict a foraging strategy for ravens, which was then later observed in actual ravens in the wild.
Game theory analyzes how people (or animals) act in situations where an individual’s success depends on both his own decisions and those of others. In 2002 Sasha Dall, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Exeter in England, used a game theory model to explain why young ravens scout for carrion alone but then recruit other birds to join the feast. This apparently altruistic behavior is evolutionarily sensible, he found, because it helps the scout fight off territorial adults and secure dominance over recruits.
Dall’s model predicted another successful strategy, one that had never been observed in ravens: gang foraging, in which a large group of birds scavenge together.
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Charles Darwin noticed that animal teamwork could make evolutionary sense for groups, but Wright’s research shows that joint efforts can pay off even in situations that emphasize the role of individual success. “Ravens are smart and selfish,” Wright says, “but there’s a lot more stability to cooperation.”
This is a perfect illustration of why creationism is full of shit. Creationists would have us believe that evolution is just some religious dogma designed by scientists to deny god while “intelligent design” is real science. But one of the main reasons ID is not real science is that it has no application. At worst, it makes no specific predictions about what we would expect to find in nature if it were true because the alleged “designer” could design things however it pleased (often the creationists’ fall back position when design flaws are pointed out), and at best, it makes vague predictions that can’t be falsified. Whereas real science must have practical application. It’s based not off of poetic scripture but on real observations and making specific predictions based off of those observations that can be tested.
Before the discovery of evolution, creationism may very well have seemed plausible enough even though there was no positive evidence to support it, but after Darwin’s findings, quote the raven, never more.
