Price Discrimination

Biological Parallel

Parent birds practice resource discrimination, allocating food unequally among nestlings based on begging intensity, size, and hatching order. Larger chicks receive disproportionate feeding despite identical cost of delivery—the same regurgitated meal goes to whoever signals highest need or quality. This differential allocation for identical resources mirrors third-degree price discrimination: the product is identical, but distribution varies by customer segment. In resource-limited environments, discriminatory allocation maximizes parental fitness by concentrating investment where returns are highest.