The emergence of the concept of a tool in food-retrieving behavior of the ants Formica japonica Motschulsky

We propose a weak definition for the usage of a tool for an ethological study of ants. In particular, we illustrate the usage of a cart in experiments on the transportation of foods by ants as employing a logical structure including a contradiction. The contradiction originates in ruling out the ver...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBioSystems Vol. 50; no. 2; pp. 143 - 155
Main Authors Kitabayashi, Nobuhide, Kusunoki, Yoshiyuki, Gunji, Yukio-Pegio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ireland Elsevier Ireland Ltd 01.05.1999
Subjects
Animals
Anthropomorphism
Ants - physiology
Emergent property
Feeding Behavior
Usage of tool
Usage of tool
Anthropomorphism
Emergent property
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Summary:We propose a weak definition for the usage of a tool for an ethological study of ants. In particular, we illustrate the usage of a cart in experiments on the transportation of foods by ants as employing a logical structure including a contradiction. The contradiction originates in ruling out the very term ‘tool’ from the description of the behavior of the animals. Focusing on a self-similar structure underlying the description of a contradiction, we observe a particular time-series sequence of ants’ behaviors following a 1/ f or Zipf’s law. The behaviors following the 1/ f or Zipf’s law manifest an appropriateness of the notion of a cart as a logical jump.
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ISSN:0303-2647
1872-8324
DOI:10.1016/S0303-2647(98)00096-3