Absent-mindedness

Biological Parallel

Attention is metabolically expensive, forcing all nervous systems to encode selectively. Grey squirrels scatter-hoard 10,000 nuts but retrieve only half — forgotten caches become oak trees. Honeybees encode high-value flower patches and let low-value visits decay. Chimpanzees track high-status allies precisely but show poor recall for peripheral group members. The encoding system is not failing — it is allocating a finite metabolic resource to the information with the highest expected return.