Concept · Decision-Making Mental Models
Opportunity Cost
Origin: Classical economics
Biological Parallel
Every calorie a lioness spends chasing a gazelle is a calorie not spent nursing cubs. Optimal foraging theory is biology's formalization of opportunity cost—bees abandon flower patches when the energy return drops below the cost of flying to the next patch. The marginal value theorem proves that organisms are ruthless opportunity cost calculators: time spent here is time not spent there, and natural selection optimizes the tradeoff with mathematical precision.