Using Shannon entropy and Kolmogorov complexity to study the communicative system and cognitive capacities in ants

INTRODUCTION The communication systems of animals as well as their cognitive abilities have been a matter of special research interest to biologists, psychologists, linguists, and many others including investigators in the field of robototechnique. During the last three decades, quite new experimental approaches, including those based on a direct dialog with animals taught artificial intermediary languages, have been developed [1–4]. It has become possible to demonstrate that primates are capable not only of decision-making, generalization and extrapolation operations, but also of using very simple grammatical rules and such visual symbols as lexigrams, letters and numbers [5, 6]. Counting and numberrelated skills have been demonstrated in the grey parrot [7]. It has been believed for a very long time that cognitive activity is only possible in vertabrates; however, MazokhinPorshnyakov’s experiments [8, 9] have demonstrated that honeybees and social wasps are capable of abstraction, extrapolation, and of solving rather complicated tasks. The question of the existence of a developed natural language in some social animal species remains obscure. The most complicated of the known natural “languages” in animals is the symbolic honeybee “dance” based on a distant homing system. This intricate form of communication was discovered by K. von Frisch [10] and then was intensively studied using different methods [11, 12]. The signal activity of ants has also attracted the attention of many researchers. Ants are known to be able to use a large variety of communication means for attraction to a food source [13]. It has remained unclear for a long time whether they have a distant homing system. In this aspect, the so-called tactile (or antennal) “code” has been actively discussed. A hypothesis regarding the existence of such an information transUsing Shannon Entropy and Kolmogorov Complexity To Study the Communicative System and Cognitive Capacities in Ants

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