Experimental study of ants numerical aptitude based on the ideas of the information theory
Boris Ya. Ryabko, Zhanna I. Reznikova · 2002
In order to obtain food ants had to transmit each other the information about a number of one of 30 branches containing a trough with sugared water. However, the food used to appear at the two definite branches much more frequently than at the rest. It turned out that ants, firstly, are able to change their communicative system in order to co-ordinate the time duration of their communications with the frequency of their occurrence and, secondly, they may add and subtract small numbers when transmitting messages about the number of the branch containing the food.