ABSTRACT
An ant colony is a kind of swarm with a group behaviour around a nest. Ants use a special mechanism called stigmergy that allows them to build up complex road systems connecting different food sources with the nest. This chapter shows that ant colonies can implement qal wa-Homer as a kind of spatial reasoning that is natural for them in their propagation around the nest. The rule qal wa-Homer is one of the fundamental inference rules of logical hermeneutics and it can be exemplified by the Talmudic example. The qal wa-Homer can simulate some forms of ant propagations, that is, the ant behaviour under the conditions of lateral activation. In contrast, in the qal wa-Homer deals with many species of different genera at once to obtain new branches. Under conditions of lateral inhibition a swarm chooses only one direction of expansion and it can be simulated by Aristotelian syllogisms. In the activation, a swarm chooses a maximum of possible directions.
