Temporal-Caloric Capital - A Methodology?

I was explaining this to Maricar the other day and before I explained it to another person, I thought I would try writing it out. I'm sure someone had this idea before me; I'm going to be stalking them shortly.

The idea is that we could measure economic behavior in animals, especially higher order mammals, specifically exchange or market activity (for whatever reason some beconomist* might want to do this), by measuring time and calories as capital and seeing how they exchange it. For instance, if animal A brings animal B a piece of food that would have taken 100 calories for B to get itself, causing A to also expect 50 calories, how does B reciprocate?

This idea comes from the axiom that time is money, that you can either walk somewhere and pay in time or take a cab and pay in money. If we take the next step and make time itself a form of capital, then we can measure exchanges of time for time in the natural world. To be comprehensive, we have to include energy (you could walk and use up time or run and use up energy). If B saves A 50 calories or 30 minutes, will A do something similar for B? If not, why did B do it? Is this activity mirrored in human behavior?

Ear muffs, creationists. The first application of Temporal-Caloric Capital that comes to mind is to examine whether something like innate or learned impulses to reciprocate in the wild preceded conscious market exchange and whether those impulses still exist in people and influence our activity. Consider this post a draft until I can get to the article I just read and cite it; the article suggests that something like this has indeed occured but does not propose a method of documenting the process. To use the running example, it is well documented that animals have emotional responses such as reciprocation, namely so called social animals. To observe how such a response causes A to respond to B's 50 calorie gift, and what we can learn from the "transaction," is the focus of inquiry here. Much could follow from it. (Is B giving a gift or have expectations become established to the point that B is buying something with the calories? Could B be buying a service, like protection? A service industry in the natural world? Are animals divided by comparative advantage - animal B "earns" time-calorie capital with its superior individual ability to gather/hunt while A, an alpha protector and rule setter, has Douglas North's "comparative advantage in violence" supposedly common to all governments?)

As I said, it is certain that these questions have been raised before, likely investigated by someone who, If you'll excuse me, I realy do have to go stalk now.


*behavioral economis, ha