Studying Animal Languages Without Translation: An Insight from Ants

The Author of this new volume on ant communication demonstrates that information theory is a valuable tool for studying the natural communication of animals. To do so, she pursues a fundamentally new approach to studying animal communication and linguistic capacities on the basis of measuring the rate of information transmission and the complexity of transmitted messages.

Animals' communication systems and cognitive abilities have long-since been a topic of particular interest to biologists, psychologists, linguists, and many others, including researchers in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. The main difficulties in the analysis of animal language have to date been predominantly methodological in nature. Addressing this perennial problem, the elaborated experimental paradigm presented here has been applied to ants, and can be extended to other social species of animals that have the need to memorize and relay complex messages. Accordingly, the method opens exciting new dimensions in the study of natural communications in the wild.

Explains how to apply the ideas of information theory for studying communication systems in far detail ? Treats both theoretical and practical aspects of communication in ants Gives an interdisciplinary view to the topic, bridging ethology, zoology, ecology and behaviour with robotics and information theory

Auteur
Prof. Dr. Zhanna Reznikova, Novosibirsk State University, Russia Prof. Dr. Boris Ryabko, Novosibirsk State University, Russia

Contenu
Communication, speech and language in human- and non-human animals. The complexity of communication systems and intelligence in animals.- Intelligent communication: can animals exchange meaningful messages?.- Cracking animals codes.- Direct dialogs with animals by means of intermediary languages.- Ants and Bits.- Why bits? Information Theory as a tool for studying natural communication systems.- Why ants? Reliable agents for information transmission.- Ants on the Binary Tree.- The entropy based approach.- The Kolmogorov Complexity-based approach.- Ants can compress information.- Numerical competence in animals with an insight from ant language.- Criteria of numerical competence for comparative studies.- Quantitative judgments in animals.- Advanced numerical abilities.- Information Theory as a tool for studying wild arithmetic on the base of their own communications.- An insight from ant language: flexibility of communication as a basis for arithmetic skills.