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 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.
Kitabayashi
N
N
Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kobe University, Nada Kobe, Japan.
Kusunoki
Y
Y
Gunji
Y P
YP
D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior