Since the times of Plato, us in the Western world have been taught to think that we're rational beings, far superior to animals, and that our emotions and appetites are, to use Plato's famous allegory, an unruly horse that our virtuous self-needs to keep in check with the help of reason.

But, as the field of cognitive sciences evolves and we learn more and more about our bodies and brains, we find out that nothing could be farther from the truth.

Neuroscience shows that most of our decisions are emotional, not rational (although our efforts to post-rationalize are pretty ingenious, to say the least) and our brains are prone to a myriad of biases that hijack our decisions without us even knowing.

So, while we may like to hold on to our noble narrative and delude ourselves into thinking we're intellectually sophisticated and so much better than our fellow animals, new research brings more evidence to the contrary.

Not only do we share more with animals than we might think, but sensations as basic as hunger drive a lot of our decision making, reveals the new study.

In fact, the research — which was led by scientists at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom — explains that our gut is capable of "storing" memories, and that a feeling of hunger can act as a sort of shortcut for making decisions that appear complex and calculated, but that is, in fact, driven by the proverbial "gut feeling."

The scientists came to this conclusion by using a complex computer model that explored an animal's chances of survival in environments where food availability fluctuates and where predators are lurking around. Their findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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