Studying Animal Languages Without Translation: An Insight from Ants

• Main Author: Reznikova, Zhanna (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2017.
• Subjects: Life sciences.; Coding theory.; Animal physiology.; Animal models in research.; Invertebrates.; Neurobiology.; Life Sciences.; Animal Physiology.; Animal Models.; Coding and Information Theory.

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...

Table of Contents:

• 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.