Game theory is a branch of mathematics that explores how people (or entities made up of people, like organizations) make decisions. This article from Discover magazine shows one of the first instances of game theory being applied to animal behavior. The animals in question are ravens, and in 2002 Sasha Dall, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Exeter in England, used game theory to explain why young ravens scout for carrion by themselves but then recruit other birds to join the feast.
Even more impressively, Dall’s model predicted that ravens would likely employ another strategy, one that had never been observed in ravens: gang foraging, where a large group of birds scavenge together. The article describes what happened when scientists looked to see if Dall was correct:
Behavioral ecologist Jonathan Wright of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology discovered this very behavior in the field. He tracked ravens in North Wales by implanting carcasses with different-colored beads that the birds ingested and later coughed up. Analysis of the beads indicated that ravens in some roosts were searching, eating, and benefiting together, just as Dall anticipated.