Humans often appear to defy principles of economic "rationality" when making decisions, by falling prey to a suite of choice biases including over-weighting immediate gratification, avoiding risk, treating identical options differently depending on whether they are perceived as a relative loss or gain, or attaching more value to objects in their possession. Here we examine what animals can tell us about these choice patterns. First, we provide an overview of different theoretical frameworks for rational decision making from psychology, economics, and biology. Next, we review empirical work examining how different species make decisions and discuss how many potentially puzzling patterns of decision making may be biologically adaptive when considering the environment in which they are made. Finally, we propose that integrating various theoretical perspectives with comparative data can elucidate the ultimate origins of variations in decision-making strategies across species and provide a new framework to illuminate the adaptive value of these strategies.
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