Stag hunt

Game with two equilibria: both hunt the stag (best outcome) and both hunt rabbits.

        Stag	Hare
Stag	10, 10	1, 8
Hare	8, 1	5, 5

Both similar to Prisoner's Dilemma and importantly different in that the cooperative equilibria is an equilibria (whereas in PD it is not: the only Nash equilibria is defect/defect).

Originally, mentioned by Rousseau in a Discourse on Inequality (and likely therefore older):

If it was a matter of hunting a deer, everyone well realized that he must remain faithful to his post; but if a hare happened to pass within reach of one of them, we cannot doubt that he would have gone off in pursuit of it without scruple…"

Interestingly Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt mentions that there are also examples in Hume:

In addition to the example suggested by Rousseau, David Hume provides a series of examples that are stag hunts. One example addresses two individuals who must row a boat. If both choose to row they can successfully move the boat. However, if one doesn't, the other wastes his effort. Hume's second example involves two neighbors wishing to drain a meadow. If they both work to drain it they will be successful, but if either fails to do his part the meadow will not be drained.

Links

• https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~bskyrms/bio/papers/StagHunt.pdf - excellent overview