Prisoner’s dilemmas ponder what happens when two rational agents, unable to communicate with one another, must choose between betraying the other for a large individual reward or cooperating for a more modest shared reward. These thought experiments are accompanied by a caveat – if both agents betray one another, they’re left with nothing. One of the best-known examples of game theory, the implications of prisoner’s dilemmas are more than just theoretical, extending to real-life matters of government and diplomacy. Illustrated with whimsical felt stop-motion, this TED-Ed animation puzzles through two prisoner’s-dilemma scenarios in which gingerbread men are forced to chew over how to keep the maximum number of limbs.